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Voyaging 
SOUTHWARD FROM THE 


STRAIT OF MAGELLAN 
by 


Rockwell Kent 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR 


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NEW YORK e> LONDON 
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
The Knickerbocker Press 


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COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 
ROCKWELL KENT 





First printing, October, 1924 
Second printing, December, 1924 





LIBRARY 








To 


Kathleen 


a) 





INTRODUCTION 


ERE isa story that treats of a great many bad characters—that is, of those 
blood-and-thunder fellows who, it is supposed, under pressure of mis- 
fortune at home, or natural lawlessness, have fled to the frontier and over, 
as to the only refuge that would tolerate them. And, as the scene of the 

story is the worst frontier in the world, its characters are, presumably, the very dregs 
of humankind, the froth of wickedness. Among them are cannibals, poachers, 
soldiers, brawlers, missionaries, a governor, a murderer or two, a minister’s son, and 
a Holy-jumper. 

Of his own character the author has found it difficult, impossible in fact, to write 
with honesty. The assumption of incorruptible virtue, by authors of books of travel, 
has become a fixed tradition, that one who would hold the attention of the virtuous 
reader would not do well to violate. 

And yet, one sensitive to truthfulness may well shrink from such bold-faced 
effrontery. Therefore have I chosen to cry out my confession in the market place; 
yet discreetly, in the remote and unfrequented market of the introduction: here, 
where perchance no curious passer-by will pause to listen, I beat my breast, and, in 
the best Russian manner, cry out, “‘Hear ye! hear ye! The ‘I’ of ‘Voyaging,’ who 
through twenty-four chapters parades his virtue, is a myth, a humbug. He is a sinful 
man.’’ 

And in proof of it (for, as a boast of virtue is evidence of wickedness, and of wicked- 
ness the contrary, proof is needed), I mind the reader of a discrepancy in Chapter II of 
the book. There, while our poverty is laid bare, and the hand of others’ generosity 
is displayed as fitting out my mate and me with many things, it is xot told how and 
where we got our food supplies for a voyage of many months. Where we procured 
them, since the story of that would involve several persons of high position, will not 
be told: but ow, is my confession. We stole them. 

We stole them in three separate raids. 

On the first raid we netted two hundred pounds of sugar (the owner of this, José 
Curtze, who later became a close friend of mine, will open his eyes and, I trust, not 
close his heart at this confession), four hundred pounds of flour, twenty pounds of 

coffee, ten pounds of tea, twenty-five pounds of beans, six bottles of ketchup, a case 
of milk, and as much again of things that I’ve forgotten. The get-away was made in 
broad daylight. 

The second raid was on a dark midnight. We had discovered a cache of stolen table 
luxuries that some thief had secreted, waiting an opportunity to remove it. ““The 
miserable thief!’ we cried; and it gave me some satisfaction to reflect that in this case 
two wrongs made one unquestionable right. Not stopping to look over our find, we 
conveyed it in sacks out over the harbor to our boat. What was our pleasure, on 


vil 


INTRODUCTION 


attaying it there, to find ourselves possessed of the following: twenty-one jars of sour 
pickles (domestic and imported), fourteen jars of sweet pickles, eleven jars of straw- 
berry jam, seven jars and two tins of marmalade, thirty-seven tins of fruit, nine tins 
of black pepper, and seventeen tins of curry powder. 

Of the third affair I was at the timea little ashamed. We had already more than we 
could eat or barter; but our hand was in and we couldn't stop. The loot was a matter 
of more flour, raisins, prunes, walnuts, etc.—besides two dozen small rockets, ten 
super rockets, twenty-odd assorted red and blue pilot flares, two dozen bars of lead, 
and six large bottles of lime juice. 

This, if it be understood as merely a suggestion of character, may complete my con- 
fession—unless, as a corrective of any misunderstanding of its social side, I mention 
that after a certain evening’s entertainment on the Wollaston Islands I awoke with 
a memorial gash on the nose. 

Those who shall have read the foregoing may wonder, as did my very good and 
understanding friend, the American Consul at Punta Arenas, why the author is still 
at large. And yet that is readily explained. Over and above the protection of my own 
craft and my mate’s formidable strength, was the persistent kindness and generosity 


of those with whom our adventures threw us. And it is with a renewed sense of my 


gratitude to them that I here subjoin their names: 


Captain I. H. Cann, of the S.S. Curaca, and officers Reid, Esdon, and 
Cavaghan, and the ship’s carpenter. 


Jorge Ihnen, of Punta Arenas. 


His excellency V. Fernandez, Governor of the Territory of Magallanes, 
and Austin Brady, and Captain Delaunoy; Sefiores Sorensen, Willum- 
sen, Curtze, Alonzo, Babut, Holke, Captain Wilson, Captain:Grez, 
and Captain “‘Jack.’’ 


The captain of the Oneida, ‘*Lobo del Mar,’’ the donkey engineer of the 
Lonsdale, ‘‘Frenchy,’’ and the cook. 


Sefiores Morrison, Marcou, Garese, and Bravo, of Dawson. 


Sefiores Mulach, Lawrence, Lundberg, and Neilsen of Tierra del Fuego; 
and Antonio, ‘‘Curly,’’ Francisco, Christopherson, Nana, and Zarotti. 


Vasquez, of the Wollaston Islands. 
Captains Dagnino and Acevedo of Talcuhuano. 
My brother Eduardo Silva Ruiz of the Chiloe. 


Captain Neilsen and Mr. Pennington, of the T'a/uma, and Violetta and 
‘‘Rosa Chilefia.’’ 


VIII 


ae 


OVER THE ULTIMATE 


Who asks when 

We that have done with doing and the blood-red tides of men 
Shall hold fast 
Ourselves at last? 

Who cares when? 


We that have dived o er the morning and the 
thither sides of night, 
What delight? 
Should we have your traces, 
Times and places— 


What delight? 


Ye that are day-things, 
Reckoners of north and south, 
Of great things ruinous; 
What should ye know of us, 
Us that have stars for our playthings, 
Yea, stars that browse on our mouth? 


What life saith, 
Shall we care, 

We that have juttied through death 
And despair? 


We that have joked with the mountain gales 
And sent them rattling home, 
We that have held the morning's sails 
O' er the foam? 
Yet laughing at sails and mornings, all things 
that are still or roam? 


What life saith 
Of zts strife, 
Shall we care? 
We that have juttied through death 
And despair, 
Yea, and life! 
Shall we care? 
Of what shall we care? 
—Bayarp BorEsEN 


>), 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
De CIOS Oe foe) er es One 


eremenem LUA TCM gree eee re Si) ge. AIX 
riper ctom eel erm Petey ee ee Se i 
ETD Teg Se a a a ee er ene 6 
NT eg ey es a EO 
EE I Pee ee ee ee 
ER ee ee ee eg 8 
MOVED PA we 8 
OU ce wee 4B 
VIII. “‘Roll On” RM a Pe ciao epee 51 
RI Cer OCSECUCHION Oy 5 ee we GE 

RU PetetesedVvchtite FO 
Bete ene EXDCUItION, 20.9 2. kk ck ee ee 7 
Ue MME eee sk ee we 8S 
Pere ate a eT 
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MU ONC i, kk ke we TO 
I ee eo TD. 
ee ee a ee i ee Se, 139 
RS te ee as i te le a By  TQB 
Sate tere ha a re a oR rel oe ISG 
Seem rovand a Christening, 96 1 « 2. ee ee we we 163 
era DOW SEN wgo ee os ee me ees ee a ZL 
RY RY ICC ree se ye, ee ON a Oe Re IZ 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


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I EE OLCST A MSs et TAM ae les ies a Wh a Stew glee ook dy OL 


XIII 


ILLUSTRATIONS 
PAGE 


Above Jackson Bay ©. > 0 2. So > 
Jackson Bay.) ay ee 
Our Anchorage, Jackson Bay .- . «9. . 2 . 0292) 2) rr 
Admiralty Sound] 2. 2 
Admiralty Sound IT 2. 0. 2 
Northward from Three Hummock Island. . . |... = 2 ne 
From Stanley Cove 9.0. 2 
Our Anchorage—Bahia Blanca. . . . . . 2 | | 20S 
Wind-torn Trees 2. 1 1 6 wg 
Map Showing Route Across Brecknock Peninsula . . . . | 3) 200 
Last Glimpse of Parry Harbor . . . |. . . . % (49) 
NoonoftheFirs:Day . .-. . . 4 « . 4 5 5 SS 
Land Legs. 2k ee we 
Glacier Near the Valley'sSummit.. . . . . . . Jo) 
One Crossing Place... 0. e.g ee 
Rainbow Valley... 0. ek 
Virgin Forest . 2. 0 6 a 
Wild Pasture Land, Rainbow Valley . . . . . . < |) eee 
From Francisco'sCamp . . . «1 ss 5 0 
Ushuaia— 2.0 2-2. be 
Yendegaia Bay 2 wee 
Tin and Granite 2.0 6 ee ee 
Mount Olivia. 2.00.06 ke 
Remilino 2.0. 2b we a 
The Garden, Harberton . . . . . - =. . | 01.) 
The House at Harberton. . . . - « ©» + © « + gen 
Falls Near Harberton. 3. 3s . . «1 2. (2 5.) 0 
WE) emer err SA es 156 


XIV 


ILLUSTRATIONS 
Packsaddle Island. 
Pasteur Peninsula . 
Anchorage Off Bailey Island 
Poachers’ Cabin, Bailey Island . 
Southwestward from the Summit of Bailey 
Westward from the Summit . 
The Inspector . 
Horn Island 
Berté’s Wigwam . 
The Shore of Bailey Island 
Site of the Bailey Mission 
Ona Wigwam . 
On the Inland Track from Harberton . 
Pastures of Via Monte 


Lago Fognano! 


- 174 
- 175 
. 178 
. 180 
. 181 


PERIOD 


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CHAPTER I 


WHY AND WHERE 


T last, for the first time in months of fevered work, I paused. The labor, the 
innumerable difficulties and delays, the anxieties of penury, all, with 
the launching of my boat from that ship’s deck that day, would end. 
I laughed as I wiped my greasy hands on a piece of waste and tossed it 

overboard, as I looked down upon the crowd against the rail where my boat hung 
suspended over the sea. Ancient dismantled hulk, of your proud launching had you 
memories of such a gathering as now appeared upon your deck, of governors and 
captains, of the rich and cultured and the beautiful ? It was spring, there in far south- 
ern South America, and the cheeks of the maidens of Punta Arenas glowed with roses 
such as only the cold, salt sea wind could make bloom. How beautiful appeared the 
ladies in their brilliant finery upon that dingy, rusted iron deck, with the wide blue 
water of Magellan’s Strait above them! How beautiful the world all glistening in 
the young September sun, the gleaming white and crimson of the flags whipped in the 
clean west wind, that wind of youth and gaiety! And on the snow white damask- 
covered hatch stood crystal glasses and Champagne! Sweet, sweet Champagne! We 
laughed with happiness; it was the christening of my boat. 


We look back upon another spring, mid-spring, and five months earlier in time. 
It is May in New York. The same west wind has blown the heavens clear; across the 
profound blue sweep belated clouds trailing their shadows over the city’s towers. The 
sun shines down with such sweet warmth that the stone walls like horns of plenty 
pour out their living flowers until the pavements are a garden gay and beautiful with 
life. New York is Paradise in spring, an Eden, with infinitely more of happiness and 


() 


VOYAGING 


beauty than was ever dreamed of by the shepherd patriarchs. The fruit of happiness 
and wisdom hangs from boughs so heavy laden down that there’s no tempter needed 
but the fruit itself. There are no gates, no wall, no Cherubim with flaming swords to 
warn and to expel. Here in this happiness the heart cries out its own despair, speaks 
its own doom and banishment. 

‘How unobserved and silently is the deep measure of the soul’s endurance filled; it 
mounts the rim, trembles a moment there, then like a torrent overflows—the vast 
relief of action. This hour you are bound by the whole habit of your life and thought; 
the next by unerring impulse of the soul you are free. How strong and swift is pride 
to clear itself, from misery or joy, from crowds, from ease, from failure, from success, 
from the recurrent brim-full, the too-much! Forever shall man seek the solitudes, 
and the most utter desolation of the wilderness to achieve through hardship the 
rebirth of his pride. 

Within an hour of the thought that I must go I had secured a clerk’s berth on a 
freighter sailing for the farthest spot on the wild, far southern end of South America, 
of all lands that one hears or reads of the most afflicted and desolate. Because I loved 
the cold and desolation and the wilderness? It is hard to say. 

Tales of adventure and shipwreck, of month-long battles with the wind and sea to 
round the Horn, of mountain seas a half a mile between their crests thundering eter- 
nally on granite shores, have woven about that region of the Sailor’s Graveyard the 
spirit-stirring glamour of the terrible. 

And yet how little is known of that region. The clerk at a book store to whom 
I applied for a map of Tierra del Fuego looked at me with superior disdain and said 
he’d never heard of it. No, it is not to landsmen that one should turn for knowledge 
of the world, for after all their world is but those cluttered portions of the globe that 
obstruct like reefs the great broad highway of the sea. So in a little store near the 
water front I found at once what I had sought; and on charts of the sea learned, 
inversely as it were, and to the precise detail of contour that only mariners’ charts 
possess, what was not sea but land. 

And had the spirit of adventure not been stirred by the nomancy of Magellan, 
Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, there in cold print and naked portent appeared 
such names as Famine Reach, Desolation Bay and Last Hope Inlet; while, suggestive 
of yet other terrors, stood warnings to shipwrecked mariners against the savage 
natives of the coast. Here was indubitable confirmation of the glamorous worst that 
legend had related of that region; and as such it clinched my will to go. 

In the confusion, ferment, haste of preparation, three weeks flew by as one; then 
with paints and canvas, brushes, paper, ink, a tent, blankets, heaps of old clothes and 
shoes, and a flute—all packed, with seven hundred dollars in my pocket, I was ready. 
It was the last of May, the eve of sailing. Midnight and pouring rain, the dreary 
water front heaped high with foreign freight, the pandemonium of harbor sounds 


(2) 


VOY ALG IN G 


out of the salt, damp, mystic, fog-enshrouded darkness: there, amid the reek and 
sound of voyaging, relinquished love and friendship glowed more beautiful than ever. 


We sailed. We cleared the Hook, the land dropped down, the hard horizon of the 
sea encircled us. My life became a memory and the future broke against our prow and 
shimmered, and was foam and trailed behind us in the steamer’s wake. There was no 
measure of the time but days and nights, and the passage of these was forgotten in the 
contentment of their monotony, or concealed in the illusion of swiftly changing 
seasons as from the springtime of the north the steamer bore us southward through 
six weeks and seven thousand miles, through the mid-summer of the equator to the 
July winter of the Strait of Magellan. | 

With the disappearance of land the ship at sea becomes a planetary body moving in 
the orbit of its prescribed course through the fluid universe of the ocean. It has cast off 
from the whole accumulated “‘realities’’ of life, and these endure but in the memories 
of the men aboard. Activity is constrained, and the mind turns to contemplation or to 
thought: the true record of a voyage on the sea must be a record of those illusive 
imaginings of the almost unconscious mind responding to the hypnotic monotony of 
the ship's vibrations, of the liquid rustling of the water streaming past her sides, of 
the endlessly recurrent rhythm of the bow wave, and the even, seething pattern of the 
wake. The memory of it is of prolonged and changeless contentment. 

Of the friendships that by time and circumstances and the dominating monotony 
of environment were privileged to become close, of those close friendships which also 
are a part of that intangible but very living intensive experience of the voyage, these 
pages of dilative adventure may bear no record save the tribute of gratitude that I 
here pay to Captain Cann of Nova Scotia and to the chief officer, Mr. Reid, of 
piratical Penzance. But of the third officer with whom less, perhaps, a friendship 
than a close partnership in adventure came to be shared much must at once be said. 
And yet, whereas I write of him with the generous permission to handle his life and 
character with entire frankness, I find myself in turning to his origin and early years 
confronted with a veil of secrecy that, less—it seemed to me—out of reserve than 
shame, he never in our eight months of companionship permitted himself to withdraw. 

Ole Ytterock was born in Trondhjem, Norway. At fourteen he went to sea on a 
sailing ship under his father. That father appears to have been a skipper of the grand 
old school who, having risen through hardship, proposed by hardship to make a man 
of Ole. After standing a few months of beating the boy deserted in some foreign port. 
His father dying a few years later, Ole never saw him again. And, having cursed him 
at parting, he loathed his memory. 

For years after that Ole’s life was marked by similar adventure. The order and 
number of his desertions, the catalogue of the foreign seaports with which the 
debaucheries of his stolen freedom made him familiar, have escaped my memory. 


(3) 


VOYAGING 


Twice he deserted in Borneo, only to be recaptured. It must have been in this period 
of his life that, consequent, I conjecture, upon a return to Norway, he became 
involved in some disgrace that made him, at least in his own bitterness of mind, a 
man without a country. 

Having deserted in Sydney, Australia, he shipped on a freighter bound for Guaya- 
quil. The crew and officers, with the exception of two men, were blacks, and Ole was 
unmercifully handled on the trip. He promptly deserted on arrival, and, being now at 
the age of twenty, enlisted with the rebels of an Equadorian revolution, being given 
the rank of lieutenant. During a street encounter of the war he was struck on the 
mouth with an iron bar which knocked out most of his teeth. After a few months he 
succumbed to typhoid and was confined to the military hospital at Guayaquil. On 
reaching convalescence he escaped from the hospital, and, in company with another 
renegade, made his way down the Guayaquil River on a raft, enduring terrific hard- 
ships through starvation and heat. They proceeded on foot, barefoot in the hot sands, 
along the coast for several hundred miles to Callao. There, befriended by the British 
consul, he obtained a passage to Europe. 

Having meantime advanced in his studies of navigation he qualified as chief officer 
and served in that capacity, to the conclusion of the war, on three successively ill- 
fated Norwegian steamers. A torpedo fragment, incident to one of the sinkings, 
further added to the disfigurement of his face. Following this he served for some 
time—until her loss, I believe—as mate of an American four-masted schooner. Being 
stranded in New York he entered into negotiation with a firm of lifeboat manufac- 
turers to sail one of their craft single-handed around the world; but through his own 
demonstration of recklessness he lost their confidence and it fell through. These, with 
rough accuracy, are the events of the life of Ole Ytterock until I met him, aged 
twenty-six, as third officer of the S. S. Curaca. 

He stood five feet eight inches in height, weighed one hundred and fifty-six pounds, 
and measured forty-two inches about the naked chest. He had a mass of thick black 
hair low on his forehead, narrow blue eyes and a mouth that was brutally ugly in its 
disfigurement. But, hard-featured as he was, his face appeared at times quite beautiful 
with tender kindness of expression. 

On the night of my arrival aboard the ship Ytterock was the officer on duty. ‘“He’s 
crazy!’ had been his comment when someone informed him of my destination and 
purpose. Three days later, at his own suggestion, we had become partners in the 
enterprise. 

‘But I have no money to pay you,”’ I said. 

“‘T wouldn't let you pay me,”’ he answered. 

And so with heads together we pored over the charts, and, discussing every impos- 
sibility of adventure, hit upon a plan that was both practicable and alluring: We'd 
get a lifeboat, deck it and rig it with a mast and sail, and laying our course from the 


(4) 





VeOSYeAG TN: G 


Strait of Magellan through the mountain-islanded channels west and south of Tierra 
del Fuego sail around the Horn. Therein lay the chance of getting wrecked or drowned 
or eaten—and we called it settled. 

It was a night of mid-July when we entered the Strait of Magellan, and the dark, 
low shore of the land was scarcely to be discerned. And it was night, and most of us 
were sleeping, when with the turning tide we swept through the First and Second 
Narrows and entered Broad Reach. We woke at the clatter of the winch: it was morn- 
ing, a blue morning and a clear one with a howling wind. We lay at anchor in the 
open road of Punta Arenas. 

You wonder when you see that harbor first, wonder what miracle of time has 
carried you back over fifty years to open your eyes upon past glories of the sea. You 
look—and doubt your senses: there they are, the ships, the barks. What world is 
this, what port? And then your staring eyes discern the vessels shorn and stripped, 
with lowered yards, dismasted—hulks. 

Beyond them is the city, crowded close—a port of commerce; warehouses, a foundry, 
shipyards, blocks of office buildings, churches, streets of one-story homes and little 
shops—there at a mile away one eyeful on the wide, desolate, fire-scarred plain of 
the continent. 

Gasping to breathe we stood there in the gale, my mate and I, and strained to see. 
Blue, golden day, wild day, exuberant, young. Swiftly and deep the thought of 
everything had touched us—here on the threshold. Adventurers, alone in a new land, 
conquerors without a sword, voyagets without a ship, vast needs and little cash, and 
friendless. With one impulse we turned and saw through eyes that the wind had 
brought to tears the wild exulting of each other’s hearts. 

The two days that the Cwraca lay in Punta Arenas harbor remain in my mind asa 
prolonged festival, the festival at once of leave-taking and of welcome in a new land. 
And yet the emotions of leave-taking were uppermost, for in the long voyage the ship 
had become as home, and the friends aboard as kindred. And in the dark night of 
parting a poignant forsakenness obliterated the thrill of adventure. Ah God! that 
wild black night upon the harbor, the confusion, hubbub, turmoil on the ship; the 
drunken toasts, farewells, that turmoil of the heart, that sublimation of the heart’s 
pain into happiness and of that happiness almost to tears. They’re heaving up: “‘On 
board the tug!—Farewell!’’ We drop away, the widening black water tosses up the 
ship’s reflected lights like flames. We pass out of the illuminated radius into the dark- 
ness, and by the darkness into the solitude of the world’s end. 


(5) 





CHAPTER II 


SAIL OR JAIL 


WEEK had passed: the friendliness of Chile had enfolded us. It proved no 
little thing to have been sponsored in Punta Arenas by the most popular 
captain on the coast, and the embarrassment and anxiety of appearing 
among strangers in the role of mad adventurer was promptly alleviated 

by the frank good will and unequalled generosity that was accorded us. To our needs 
the most important individual of the territory was Jorge Ihnen, the maritime man- 
ager of the largest shipping interests of the port. He wasa young man of distinguished 
presence, endowed with a humanly penetrating understanding, warm sympathy and 
imagination. His decisions about character were made at a glance, and his approval 
was backed by sustained confidence and active support. During my first conversation 
with him he subjected me to close but not unfriendly scrutiny. At last he said 
magnificently: 

“Tf there is anything at any time that you want, come to me and ask for it.”’ 

There proved to be very little that at some time I didn’t want, but nothing, great 
or small, that was not granted. And if, with due modesty, I attribute our sailing 
southward at last in a well equipped boat of our own in some degree to our own 
persistent labor, it was due vastly more to the friendship of Ihnen and those whom 
through him we came to know. On the very day of our arrival a boat was found for 
us, and with that at once our greatest care was gone. 

And that week later as I sat with my mate in the snug, floating quarters that had 
become our home and talked of our windfall of good fortune it seemed suddenly to us 
poor four-flushing adventurers, that we were as the King and Duke in “‘Huckleberry 
Finn,’’ and that if our prosperity increased an enraged populace must some day turn 


(6) 


VeO-Y AIG TN G 


and drive us out of town. But as the weeks went on and we continued undetected, 
honored, we, like other impostors, came to believe in ourselves as King and Duke by 
the grace of God. And of what our life had become, here is the picture: 

It is night, in the harbor of Punta Arenas. The hulk of the old ship Lonsdale 
swings gently rocking at her moorings. In the mahogany furnished cabin of the 
captain, long untenanted, sleep we two. The morning comes, we wake in darkness, 
light the lamp and dress. I grope my way up the companionway into the piercing 
cold. Some snow has fallen and my steps sound muffled on the iron deck. Over the 
_black water a golden streak of dawn breaks through low-hanging clouds. Masthead 
lights gleam over the shadowy forms of ships, and from the city glitter the lamps of 
early risers. It is profoundly still. I draw a pail of icy water from the tank and wash, 
and, shivering, dive down below. In the old ship’s saloon a swinging lamp burns 
feebly losing its light upon the dust-grey floor and ceiling and in the shadowy con- 
fusion of the sails and ship’s gear littering the walls and corners. The pot-bellied iron 
stove glows red. My mate has finished sweeping, and as the dust cloud settles down 
we move a little table to the heat. The cook comes in with coffee. Good. Here sit we 
two amid the early-morning dark and cold of a Magellan winter toasting our legs and 
ribs at the hot fire and warming our bellies with the boiling drink. 

The bump and rubbing of a heavy boat along our ship, the clattering of wooden 
ladder steps against the iron sides, voices of men, the tramp of heavy boots on deck: 
these tell that it is seven and the working-day has begun. On the forward deck two 
carpenters report to me for work. 

Against the starboard rail, blocked up and braced to stay upright, was the boat 
that I had bought, a lifeboat from the wrecked steamer Beacon Grange. The boat's 
length was twenty-six feet, her beam eight feet six, her depth inside three feet and an 
inch or two. She was a double-ender, clinker built, with light, bent ribs. The stem 
was splintered, seven planks were stove or rotten; she was warped, dry as a bone and 
open everywhere. She was of slipshod factory construction with every knee and 
brace a false one sawed from straight-grained plank. Such was our boat, a derelict. 
She cost me twenty dollars. 

From then onward—every waking hour, week days, Sundays, feast days, dawn till 
bedtime, in sun or rain or snow or wind we worked upon that boat. We shaped a 
curved, gnarled root into a stern; we fitted new planks to the damaged sides; we gave 
her a strong, deep, hardwood keel and shod it with heavy iron; we warped timbers 
for the deck and cabin. From that turmoil of activity resounded the din of a ship- 
yard: the blows of the hammer and the tap, tap, tap on the rivets, the song of the 
saw, the thunderclaps of falling planks, the clangorous beating of iron at the forge, 
the hiss of the torch, the raucous tearing of the scraper over nails and sand. Thus—in 
snow and sleet and drenching rain and winter cold, with numb hands and icy feet, 
with laughter and song—these were the sound of us, the breath of us, the life of us for 


(7) 


VOYAGING 


days that became weeks, and weeks that made a month—and two; and still we 
worked. 

We lived aboard our hulks like kings, we tasted mutton seven different ways a day, 
our beds to tired bodies were as soft as dream clouds; yet—that old Lonsdale was a 
madhouse. She was a sepulchre of derelicts, of men still living on in futile hope—or 
none, with life behind them. 

There were four men besides us two aboard the ship. They occupied what had once 
been the officers’ quarters aft of the saloon. They messed by themselves and at night 
kept closely to their rooms—except one, an old Frenchman, who was constantly with 
us in the long evenings. Frenchy was a good-hearted sober man; the others as their 
moods permitted them were generous and friendly or morosely indifferent. They were 
failures, sunk through inaction into sterile intentioning or mutton-witted com- 
placency. 

There was little drinking on the ship, but occasionally there were orgies that 
enlivened an entire week. One night is a fair picture of such holidays. 

Crash. A roar of curses. Crash, a heavy weight falls on the floor. The tinkle of 
broken glass. Silence. Suddenly a door is hurled open and back against a wooden 
wall. Heavy footsteps cross the passage and enter another room. Voices, the scuffling 
of chairs, a roar and then a savage laugh—and Frenchy pops in to us his round and 
rosy face staring with the fright of some poor little hunted creature. He doesn’t 
speak; but, getting a pack of cards from a shelf, draws a long bench close to the light 
and us, straddles it, and feverishly lays out the cards for solitaire. There is a moment's 
peace; then a great bulk of something stirs and lurches down the passage towards us, 
muttering ominously. A huge form fills the doorway, a rhinoceros of a Norwegian, 
coarse and heavy-featured with round watery blue eyes, red lids and puffy sockets. 
He gives a hitch to his pants and like a rolling ship comes in. “‘Good evening, 
gentlemen,’’ he says with impertinent obsequiousness, and drops upon the bench. 
Frenchy has fled. 

He talks with the incoherence of a maudlin drunkard; and, after a preamble, says 
this with some distinctness: ‘‘Misher Kent or cap’n or king, whatever you are, I’m 
drunk, anoiam.”’ 

While he gathers his wits to continue, his fingers work as if they played a piano. 
“What I was gonersay,’’ he gets out with sudden explosive effrontery and a terrific 
effort at concentration. ‘“We don’t like Americans on this ship—get me? An’ there’s 
goner be some shootin’.”’ 

To avoid trouble, I am trying, during this, to keep my mind upon a very delicate 
drawing upon which Iam busied. Idon’t look up. He continues. 

‘I’m the strongest man on this ship, I’m the strongest man in the territory, an’ I 
can throw i 

My mate by this is on his feet: 


(8) 








im 


DDS 


muna ee 
= MLE TLL 


i iain 


A 


me oar 


7. /\ 


| 
rman 
born ern 


aT, 





THE LONSDALE 


VOWA GING 


‘Stand up, you miserable white-livered pot-bellied bluff, stand up and I'll sit you 
on your ear so dam quick——’”’ 

“Could you do that to me?”’ queries the big fellow quite piteously. 

“‘You bet your damned life I could,’’ roars my furious mate. 

““Well,”’ says the mighty one ever ever so gently, ‘‘maybe you could.”’ And, as if 
suddenly become very old and tired, he gets laboriously up from his seat and leaves us. 

Meanwhile as the weeks flew by, and the boat forever neared but never reached 
completion, another worry than that of elapsing time arose: approaching penury. 
Despite the fact that we had lived board free on the Lonsdale, there were the wages 
of the men to be paid every Saturday night and the constant retail purchase to 
be met of such supplies as were needed in the reconstruction of the boat. There were 
expenses incidental to our visits ashore—to which the mate’s periodical debauches, 
until I checked them, contributed not a little—and to which the famed conviviality 
of Punta Arenas contributed a great deal. ‘‘It is the general rule with the inhabitants 
of the ‘Campo’,’’ wrote Captain Bové of the Italian Royal Navy, in 1884, “‘that 
whatever one takes into the so-called colony (Punta Arenas) must all be left behind; 
to go away from it with a farthing would be so infamous as to cut off the delinquent 
from all human fellowship.’’ And for the avoidance of such infamy Punta Arenas is 
blessedly supplied with tabernacles. 

Well, we had been two months in Punta Arenas and—but for a little sum that I had 
saved to meet an impending enormous bill for wire, cordage, canvas, chains, paint, 
foundry work and what not, and put aside for presents for the kind fellows on the 
Lonsdale who had helped us—I was penniless. Yet had I known in what good 
hands we were it would have caused me less concern than it did. One reckless night 
at the Magellan Club illuminated me. After several rounds of drinks amongst a party 
of six the checks had all fallen to the lot of one man, except a check for forty cents 
that was mine. 

“T’ll throw you for that and pay them all,”’ said he. 

‘“‘Done,’’ said I, and I threw—and lost. 

“Again.’’—I lost. 

Within two minutes the whole pile, amounting to the huge sum of eight American 
dollars, lay beforeme. Fortunately I could pay it, and I called the attendant. Suddenly 
the man on my left reached over and swept the whole pile away from me, at the same 
time instructing the attendant to refuse my money. 

‘“No,”’ they said, ‘“‘you’re our guest in Punta Arenas and you're not allowed to pay.” 

Nevertheless that great bill for supplies hung over me like the sword of Damocles. 
Though I had already asked for it the compilation of so compendious a document 
appeared to demand innumerable consultations between the heads of departments. 
‘Sail or jail,’’ I muttered as I went about. One day I was called into the office of 
Captain Delaunoy, the port captain, and Mr. Sorensen, the fleet engineer. 


(10) 


VaGayen. GN G 


vey 


—— 
—— 





This item of paint,’’ they questioned me, “‘you used that on work for us, didn’t 
you? And these pine boards?”’ 

“No,’’ Isaid, ‘they were for me.”’ 

I went into Ihnen’s office. “‘I want the bill,’’ I said. 

He finished what he was doing, rose from his desk and came to the window. 

“What's the matter?’’ he asked putting his hand on my shoulder and turning my 
face to the light. 

I felt as if tears were coming to my eyes. ‘‘Nothing,’’ I answered. 

Ihnen smiled. He rang for his secretary and dispatched him with a message to 
Captain Delaunoy. In a few minutes the secretary returned and the bill was handed 
to me. 

‘“Three—four—five thousand pesos,’’ I cried to myself to steel my courage against 
the bill’s pronouncement of my bankruptcy. 

I opened it. It was a short document of about a dozen items: the boat, a little 
paint, some rope, some odds and ends: the total—I’ ve forgotten; it was nothing. 

Ihnen was again busy writing. He was not to be thanked—till now. 

And there is another incident that I may here relate that it may not appear that the 
Latin American heart is the only kind one. Mr. Brady, the American consul in Punta 
Arenas, had from the beginning been a staunch friend to our crack-brained enterprise 
and to us. 

‘“‘Come,’’ he said to me, that momentous day before at last we sailed, ‘‘we’re going 
shopping. What do you want?” 

““Onions,’’ I said—and he bought them. 

“Baking powder—cheese—an alarm clock.’’ These and more were purchased— 
besides a bottle of his pet specific for the ‘‘grippe’’ that I appeared to be ailing with. 

Then returning to the Consulate he presented me with an American flag and a large 


(Ir) 


VOYAGING 


envelope that he said contained my sailing orders—‘‘not to be opened until at sea.” 

I opened them at sea. The envelope contained two hundred and fifty pesos. “‘Sail as 
you please,’’ I read them. 

But to return: The boat now lacked nothing but a few last touches of luxury and 
art, and these a week at most would see supplied. She was decked and cabined, 
caulked and painted and varnished. The spars had been my work. From sound and 
straight Norwegian spruce I'd planed and tapered them and scraped and polished 
them. To the least detail they were beautifully done. My mate meanwhile had made 
the sails; they were of heavy duck, and strong enough, as I said prophetically at that 
time, to tear the boat itself apart. Sailmaker and rigger, you’d look far for a better 
one than the mate. However, with only a few last touches to add, a bit of caulking, 
a seam to putty, last dabs of paint or varnish, last touches everywhere of no necessity 
but of vast importance to us, that last week before the launching was whirlwind 
climax to long weeks of effort. Far into the nights we worked with lanterns on the 
deck or tween-decks where the spars and rigging were assembled. But always, how- 
ever time might press, we held to a high standard, slighting nothing. And in my 
delight with the perfection of the boat I likened it to the one-horse shay. It shall be 
all, I proudly thought, so evenly and sufficiently strong, from the shoe of the keel to 
the eye of the peak flag-halyards, that nothing can go wrong with her until the end 
of time. | 

This was to be the farthest south launching in all history of an American ship, and 
we determined to do it magnificently making the occasion an imposing example of 
Yankee efficiency. All kinds of help was given us. They sent a gang aboard to clean 
the hulk and to remove the litter and left-over material of our work. The deck was 
made beautifully tidy. The derrick tackles were inspected, blocks were oiled, new 
rope was sent aboard for slings. 


It is the day before the launching, steam is in the winch, our boat stands in the 
slings. We're flying about adding the last touches of perfection to order already more 
than good enough. Yet that last day is far too short. It is late, very late at night, 
when I bring out from concealment an empty champagne bottle, carry it quietly on 
deck and fill it with the amber water from the tank. Taking it down again into my 
cabin I whittle a mushroom stopper for its top out of cork from an old life belt. This 
I wire carefully and tight so that the cork bulges out between the crossings of the 
wire. Then I coat the top above the label with glue and, producing a piece of tin foil 
saved from cigarettes, clap it on, rubbing it so that it adheres tightly. When I have 
dusted off the loose tin foil, rubbed it a bit, and dusted on some dirt from the floor, I 
have what appears to be a virgin bottle of Champagne. It is for the christening.— 
This more than anything declares our penury. 

The Great Day opens up its eyes so bright and beautiful that it might be God’s 


(12) 


ee Se 


6 evi Te ; i 2 = y 


i \M pM 





~SS 


UE LULL 





KATHLEEN AS SHE WAS 


VOYAGING 


birthday-blessing on our little boat. Breathless with haste and the confusion of last- 
minute needs we feel the hours slip by like moments. Suddenly in the midst of things 
a steamer blows, and the harbor tug, brilliant with flags aloft and a gay crowd on 
deck, bears down. The hour is at hand. 

And now in that hour we have reached the moment with which this story began. 
Governors and captains, a consul, editors, sweet women and pretty girls are crowded 
about the launching platform. It was a moment to pause; and if as a tumult of 
thought sped through my mind I mechanically wipe the dirt of labor from my hands 
upon a piece of waste, and throw the waste into the sea, it is at once the unconscious 
gesture of completed toil and a symbol of the restored serenity of a distraught adven- 
turer's mind. The christening is at hand. There where the infant boat hangs at the 
rail’s side in the slings stands a beautiful Chilean girl with my poor Champagne 
bottle, gaily draped with bunting, in her hand. She speaks: 

‘‘Le nombro Catalina, barquito nuestro, que te acompafie la benedicion de Dios en 
tu viaje.” 

She breaks the bottle; and the amber fluid flows like rarest wine over the bows. At 
that instant the Kathleen with the mate standing proudly on board dropped smoothly 
down and kissed the sea. 

‘““Mother,”’ a little girl was saying as the bottle broke, ‘‘it splashed in my face.”’ 

“‘Never mind, dear,’’ answered her sweet mother, ‘‘it was good Champagne.’’ 

The last days are upon us. I get our sailing dispatch from the Captain of the port, 
and mark our probable course on the chart. 

“Tf you're not back in four months,”’ he says, ‘‘we’ll send a cruiser to find you.”’ 

I make my will at the Consulate, receive the Godspeed of the Governor, the God- 
speed of our friends—and the eventful morning dawns. 

The last honors of a departing ship are accorded us. Towed by the harbor-launch, 
toasted and cheered by friends aboard, we pass out through the shipping and cast off. 
And as the wind lays us over and we bear away, we roar across the widening water 
the old sailing ship chantey, ‘‘Rolling Home.’’ And though the words we made for 
it are not poetry I give them here, since to us and to those who that day heard them 
they spoke the thrill of our adventure. 


So farewell to Punta Arenas 
And its maidens bright and fair; 
Though the cannibals should eat.us, 
Still our hearts lie buried there. 


Chorus. Rolling home, etc. 


(14) 


ee ee ee 


Veer AiG LNG 


Though the Cape Horn swell engulf us, 
And the ocean be our grave, 

There'll be many there to greet us 
In the ‘‘graveyard”’ of the brave. 


Chorus. Rolling home, etc. 
And many verses more—long after none but ourselves and the west wind heard the 


sound of them. And as Punta Arenas faded from our view we still could see the red, 
white and blue of Chile dipping in salute to us from the masthead of the Lonsdale. 


(15) 





CHAPTER III 


SAIL! 


OWN the long stretch of Broad and Famine Reach stand the white peaks 
and ranges of the wilderness, with all the threat and promise of their mys- 
teries: and still beyond and high above them all the unattainable white 
peaks of Sarmiento. Ah, what a day! So sharp and blue, and golden where 

the far sky touches the circle of the world! The lower atmosphere is glistening with 
the spray of wind-blown wave crests. A double rainbow spans the west, an omen of 
strong wind and of good fortune; and, where it rests among the mountains of the 
south, there in some peaceful, solitary virgin valley, lies the forever sought and 
undiscovered gold of happiness. 

With sails all set and drawing full the little Kathleen, wind abeam, lies over on 
her side and with the main boom trailing in the water and the deck awash goes like 
a wild thing fled to freedom. *‘Don’t ease her!’’ cries the mate. Her bows shiver the 
seas, the cold spray wets us. A school of porpoises is racing, leaping, plunging round 
us. Good luck! The gods are with us! 

The wind has risen and the seas run high. Great crested waves bear down and 
threaten us—and laugh, and lift us tenderly, and cradle us. We ride the seas. Our ship 
is tight and strong; she sails, and holds her course unswervingly. ‘‘A beauty!’’ cries 
the mate; and with my soul on eagle-wings of happiness I go below. 

There in the cabin was the final word of cleanliness and order. There were conveni- 
ent shelves with tins of food set out in orderly array, with pots and dishes in their 
place secured against the tossing of the boat, with space for linen and for books and 
cameras and paints; there were the racks for instruments and charts, for the compass 
and the clock and the lamp, and for pens and brushes, for saws and hammers and 


(16) 


si Se we 


ee ee eee ee ee ee 


JO 


eS 
Fee Ey | ees Zi i 
Te | Seat 


dle SG Sy ls 


Valentine 


ie 


—_ 


neg 


ies ge 7z 
ek 


LE uae 


Pte caren 


2a”? 
bared 


Ses oases os Se 





40 





WOny An UN G 


pliers and files, for the marlinspike and the caulking iron, for the lead line, for the 
flags and pilot lights and rockets, for my canvases and paper. Our beds were cleverly 
contrived: on canvas, laced across, we had spread our store of clothes and made a 
mattress of them. The beds were laid this day all clean and sweet for night. The stove 
was polished and the floor was scrubbed. It was perfection in that little cabin—all 
but a cup or so of water that had leaked up from the bilge and slopped around untidily 
in a corner of the floor. 

I took a cup to bail it out, chatting meanwhile through the open companionway 

with the mate. 

“With the wind holding like this,’’ he said as a fresh squall struck and heeled us 
over, ‘we should get to Willis Bay by five o'clock this afternoon.’’ It was now about 
eleven, and in an hour and a half we had covered perhaps twelve miles. Our course 
was for Cape Valentine on Dawson Island. In two days, we figured it, we'd reach the 
head of Admiralty Sound; in two days more be out and headed westward to round the 
point of Brecknock Peninsula. 

And all the time I bailed: 

Quite innocent of trouble it occurred to me that one might have done it better with 
a kettle than a cup. I take a kettle, plant one foot upon the boat’s sloping side to 
brace myself, and set to work in earnest. 

The mate is singing as the spray flies over him. His is a happiness too great to bear 
alone. He is in love and she is many thousand miles away. A kettle of cold water on 
his legs startles him out of it. 

A quarter of an hour has passed. I’m bailing desperately, emptying the water over 
the mate, his tender heart and everything. I’m standing in it to my knees, and steadily 
it rises. There’s not one chance of beating back to the near windward shore; we change 
our course to run to leeward fifteen miles away. There’s a gale and a high sea, and our 
boat is sodden with the weight of water in her. In turns we bail, work to exhaustion, 
both of us; and steadily, from God knows where, she fills. 

And then the truth strikes home—we’re sinking. And the land’s too far away to 
reach. 

We come about to lower sail. The gaff jambs, and the mate scrambles aloft to 
trample on it. In a fury of beating and slatting and the clattering of blocks and whip- 
ping of the halyards down it comes—and we lie hove-to under the staysail. 

The skiff that we carry on the deck is eight feet long, four wide, flat-bottomed; it’s 
of no conceivable use in a sea. Nevertheless we launch it and make it fast astern, and 
while it bucks like an enraged animal to dislodge me, I succeed with canvas and 
tacks in decking it over. I stow oars and life belts and a few necessities on board, stick 
my opened clasp knife in the bow to cut us free at the last moment from the wreck, 
and the lifeboat is ready. 

Seen from the skiff, the forlorn condition of the Kathleen was apparent. She lay 


(19) 


VOYAGING 


there listing heavily, with half the deck submerged; and every sea broke over her. 
Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the conviction of catastrophe. 
There was neither thought of God nor fear of death but only a poignant vision of my 
life as finished and left pitifully incomplete, a lightning-flash of home with the little 
children and their mother weeping there, a sickening shame at death so futile and so 
miserable as this, an instant of vertigo, a weakening of the knees, a griping of the 
bowels as though I hung over an immense and sheer abyss, a wild impulse to madness 
—to throw my arms aloft and scream. Then swiftly, at the very breaking point of all 
control, profounder shame swept that whole agony aside and left the mind unbur- 
dened of all memory. So that with humor I could listen to the mate’s wild strong 
young voice sing “Smile a while,’’ to the swashing rhythm of his bailing; and I could 
note the little quaver in it, and, understanding song and quaver, laugh to think that 
even he got just a little touched by fear. 

We stood in the cabin almost to our waists in water, and bailed in turns. The place 
was devastated. With the rolling of the boat the water swashed about and swept our 
treasures from the shelves. Shoes, socks, linen, paper, bread, cocoa, curry powder, 
nuts and cigarettes covered the tide and swirled about the vortex of the pail. My 
bunk was flooded so that the blankets floated out. 

I took the log book of the Kathleen, sat down on the edge of the bunk, and on the 
clean first page wrote this, ‘‘our epitaph,”’ I thought. 

“First day out, three hours from sailing. Boat half full of water, hove-to. Bailing 
in turns. Lifeboat equipped to cross to Porvenir. Strong west wind blowing. Mate 
singing, great fellow. No chance to save anything; lifeboat is too small.” 

Then, tying up a few treasures in a waterproof package, I was ready. 

That the Kathleen would sink was inevitable. For an hour we had fought against 
the water; we had done our best and were incapable of greater effort, and we had 
never for a moment checked the water's rise. The end was not a matter of guess but 
of exact calculation. I knew that in ten minutes more the ship would sink. Intelligence 
excluded hope. 

My mate was gifted with many noble and endearing qualities: he was courageous, 
good-natured and doggedly perseverant. But of intelligence—the power to reason, to 
deduce effect from cause—he had absolutely none. And it was pathetic, not only to 
observe him in the face of the tragically apparent futility of all that we could do stub- 
bornly plying the heavy pail to the everlasting rhythm of his song, but to reflect that 
in his blindness to the imminence of death he missed the glory and the pain of life’s 
high moment. He was too dull to know that we were doomed! 

So we bailed and sang. Five minutes went, and ten. We passed the limit of the time 
that reason had allowed the boat to live; yet still she floated, rolling sluggishly. And 
as the seas piled over her there seemed each time no chance that she'd emerge again. 
Time brought new energy. We fought the water stubbornly. 


(20) 


eG yenute TN: CG 


\ 


| 








: 





Not daring to hope, we bailed—for it was all that there was left in life to do. 

The Kathleen didn’t sink. 

Days later when we beached her we understood the cause of her misfortune and 
salvation. That day her floating was a miracle. Slowly it dawned upon us as we 
worked that we had stopped the water’s rise; and when at last we knew beyond all 
doubt that we could hold our own it was, strangely, without emotion that we 
received our lives again. 

It was by now perhaps two in the afternoon. The water in the cabin was still up 
to our knees, and it required continuous bailing to hold it. Ruined supplies of every 
kind floated about, and our fair ship, four hours ago so trim and beautiful, was now 
the picture of desolation. The wind and sea abated as the day wore on; we took so 
little water now that by our bailing every minute showed it lower; and presently, 
with not a foot’s depth left, we hoisted a reefed mainsail, came about, and started on 
a long tack for the windward shore some miles away. 

The afternoon increased in beauty and in peacefulness; and as the certainty of cur 


(21) 


VOYAGING 


security became established, profound contentment arose like the mornin g sun within 
us. Life is so infinitely sweet and rich that nothing matters—only that we live. 

Evening comes on, the shadows of the land creep out across the sea and cover us. 
It’s cold. On the last breath of the dying wind we reach our anchorage. 

How still it is! Darkness has almost hidden the abandoned whaling village on the 
shore. Dimly the forms of stores and houses detach themselves from the dark ground. 
In one house burns a lamp. A man is driving cattle down the silent street. Trecless 
sand hills enclose the little plain on which the settlement is built; beyond them stands 
the barrier of snow-topped mountains. . . . For long minutes we have not spoken. 

We go below. There’s a damp fire burning and it’s faintly warm. We are dead tired. 
Wrapping ourselves in soaking blankets we lie down in wet beds to sleep. 


(22) 





CHAPTER IV 


JAIL? 


HAT first long miserable night the hours seemed years. An east wind raised 
a swell that bore in from the open strait and rocked our little vessel at her 
anchorage. Shivering and tossing in our soaking beds, sleeping a little while 
from sheer exhaustion to wake as cold as ice, churning our legs for warmth, 
beating our arms, dawn came at last, and in its smileall memory of our misery vanished. 
The calm of that new sunrise and the clean sweet morning air were drafts of courage. 
Deep we drank. Again far off across the blue and peaceful strait glistened the snowy 
mountains of the wilderness, commanding us. Heave up the anchor, voyagers! Heave 
away! Heave! We drew the anchor dripping on the deck. The gentle west wind filled 
the sail; she heeled; the water rippled past her side. Southward again we bore away. 

Southward, but timidly. With reefed mainsail we skirted the shore, watching the 
water in the bilge as one would hold a fevered pulse and count its beats. She leaked 
—a very little; and as the wind held moderate, our confidence returned. We left the 
shore, and laid our course by chart to cross the strait and make Cape Valentine, the 
northern point of Dawson Island. 

Meanwhile one man worked to restore a semblance of order to the cabin. Appear- 
ance has at times a grateful eloquence and affects the mind more forcibly than the 
reality; and there is a sure relief from the distress of misfortune to be found in 
prettily concealing it from sight. We hid our drenched and ruined property, wrung 
out our soaking clothes and blankets, packed them in sacks, and stowed them in the 
forward hold. To the damage that had been done to the bulk of our supplies in both 
our main storage spaces, forward and aft, we that day shut our eyes, though it was 
not long before the stench of moldering food drove us to thoroughness. 

(23) 


VOYAGING 











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We cleaned the rusted stove, and polished it, and lit a cheering fire. We cooked 
good food, and ate, and were content. And although as the day advanced the wind 
increased, so that the water entered and kept us bailing, no near danger threatened; 
and our thoughts could trifle with the dread of what might come, and only savor our 
contentment. 

Only the voyager perceives the poignant loveliness of life, for he alone has tasted 
of its contrasts. He has experienced the immense and wild expansion of the spirit out- 
ward bound, and the contracted heartburn of the homecoming. He has explored the 
two infinities—the external universe—and himself. 

Only the voyager discovers—and by discovery he generates. For of man’s universe, 
which is but that portion of the infinite which he perceives, he is, by his perception 
of it, the creator. Thus in his own image has man created God. 

The wilderness is kindled into life by man’s beholding of it; he is its consciousness, 
his coming is its dawn. Surely the passion of his first discovery carries the warmth 
and the caress of a first sunrise on the chaos of creation. 

So, like a sun, we climbed the hilltop of the sea and with the thrill of wonder saw 
new lands unfold themselves. The long shore of Dawson Island was before us, a tree- 


(24) 





VWOYA GING 


less waste of sand cliffs, cloud-shadowed, desolate and wind-swept. And the dark sea 
broke in gleaming surf along the beach. And although with the nearing of the land 
the strait was safely crossed, our relief was tempered by the frown of the unfriendly 
coast we'd made. 

Off Cape Valentine is a long reef with outlying shoals and fields of kelp. We gave 
these dangers a wide berth, passed them, and entered the calm water of the island’s 
lee. And almost at that moment the sun broke through the clouds; it cheered and 
warmed us. Its golden light transfused the scene and threw a new enchantment over 
everything. 

The low sun’s shadows raised into relief the strangely channeled sand cliffs of the 
coast and made the vari-colored clumps of bushes show like jewels, dark and glisten- 
ing, on the yellow fields and bogs. Clefts in the shore revealed the inland plain and 
forests of tall green-leafed trees with somber-shadowed depths. Eastward lay the 
seemingly limitless expanse of Useless Bay; and straight before us, far beyond the 
horizon of the sound, ranges of snow white peaks closed in the south. 

Darkness came on when we were miles from port, and only deeper blackness showed 
the contour of the land against the sky. A strong east wind had risen, and in the glam- 
our of the night and the wild noises of the wind and sea we seemed to drive on with 
unearthly speed. 

On Offing Island, off the mouth of Willis Bay, was a light we steered by, though its 
dazzling flashes only deepened the obscurity about us. The mate, from his lookout 
forward, at last made out the black mass of the point of land we had to turn. We 
drove nearer, keeping it a few points off the starboard bow; we were rounding it. 

What happened to the mate’s wits for a moment I don’t know. But suddenly he 
screamed out, “‘Keep her off!’’ I did. And we shot through the churned white water 
of a reef we'd missed by not our length. 

Within the bay where the calmer water reflected the black shadow of the land was 
darkness that no eyes could penetrate. Sounding continually we searched the shores 
for the narrow entrance of a sheltered cove that we'd been told of, but the deceptive 
contours of the forest hid it from us; and finding ourselves at last at the head of the 
bay, in shoal water among reefs and flats, we dropped anchor in two fathoms. 

While the mate put the deck in order I rowed out in the skiff to explore the sur- 
roundings of our anchorage. All around were shoals on which we must have grounded 
had good fortune not favored us. 

That night in the security of the wilderness we laid aside the burden of our troubles 
and, peacefully as little children, slept. 

We awoke ina new world, tranquil, sunlit and profoundly silent; and, in the varied 
splendor of its vegetation, almost tropical. The forest towered over us, tall evergreens 
with densely intermingling tops, and flowering shrubs and vines and mossy parasites 
nourished to rank luxuriance by a rain-soaked soil. The calm bay mirrored back a 


(25) 






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cloudless sky; and, in the breathlessness of that spring morning, the sun shone on us 
with a summer’s warmth. 

We were anchored only a few yards from the narrow entrance of the cove that we'd 
been looking for the night before. Having explored it in the skiff and found it to be 
quite perfect for a permanent anchorage and for beaching our boat for examination 
and repair, we hove anchor and proceeded to tow the Kash/een through the channel. 
Meanwhile, however, the west wind had begun to blow; and before we could enter 
the cove it gained such force that we were checked, and, in spite of all that we could 
do by towing with the skiff and sculling with a long sweep on the Kathleen, slowly 
driven back to the mouth of the channel. Here, in the wind and current, we anchored, 
decidedly worse off for having tried to better our position. 

With the saturated condition of everything on board there was immediate work 
to be done. Soon blankets, sweaters, coats, socks, shirts and drawers flapped like 
holiday flags from the rigging; and, if a thorough examination of our stores brought 
home to us the full extent of our loss and damage, there was at least some satisfaction 
got from throwing the spoiled stuff overboard. The most irreparable loss was of a 
small kodak. The salt water had rusted the balanced mechanism of the shutter 


(26) 


VOYAGING 


beyond repair, and I was reduced to lug about throughout my travels a cumbersome 
and heavy Graflex. 

In style that fitted the exhilaration of our mood we served ourselves afternoon tea. 
It was warm and cosy in the little cabin, and the purring of the kettle and the gurgle 
of the tide against the boat’s thin sides were apt accompaniment to our contentment. 
For a long time neither of us spoke. 

‘““Mate,’’ I said at last, ‘‘this is our first day in the wilderness; and we have both 
realized, I think, particularly after the hectic months of getting ready and too many 
people, what peace is to be found in being alone. And, as the only human beings of 
the place, we have now tasted the elation of supremacy. It’s more than freedom; in 
a sense we're kings.”’ 

At that instant something struck the side of the boat; footsteps sounded on the 
deck. As we sprang toward the companionway there appeared, glaring at us, the 
unprepossessing and stupid face of a soldier. 

‘“Ustedes estan arrestados,’’ he growled. 

We wete prisoners. 


(27) 





CHAPTER V 


BATDSUE 


ORT HARRIS, on Dawson Island, is the only settlement in the archipelago 

west of Tierra del Fuego. Its romantic history dates from forty years or more 

ago; a period when, incidental to the white man’s occupation of the prairie 

lands of southern Patagonia, there was carried on a ruthless war to extet- 
minate the aborigines. Inhabiting the interior of Tierra del Fuego were the Ona 
Indians, a superb race related to the giant natives of the mainland north of the Strait 
of Magellan. Their warring and predatory habits brought them into immediate con- 
flict with the white invaders of their lands. Thefts of the settlers’ sheep caused stern 
measures of retaliation, until the misunderstanding of two alien races, that diplomacy 
might have converted into friendship, grew into a bloody conflict. Soldiers were sent 
to garrison the farms; and, as an inducement to ruffians out of employment to join in 
the good work, a pound a head was offered for dead Indians. The war became a 
loathsome butchery. 

Deeply moved to pity by this revolting carnage, the local diocese of the Silecian 
order established a mission at Port Harris for the persecuted savages, and undertook 
with the sincerest Christian intent to instruct them in the graces of civilization, to 
teach them to labor, and to incline their hearts toward God. So the astonished Indians 
in many hundreds were, by the soldiers, herded up like sheep and driven on board 
ships, and bound and dumped like mutton into the hold, and conveyed to Dawson 
Island. 

About that ill-fated missionary enterprise are told stories of the most loathsome 
debauchery and crime; in the absence of apparent motive they are incredible. It is 
told and generally believed that on the arrival of the first consignment of natives they 


(28) 


WOryA\ Gil N:G 


were received with Judas-like expressions of kindness by the black-hearted priests. 
They were conducted to a banquet lavishly set out, and there fed poisoned food. They 
feasted and died. Although on the whole ridiculous, the details of this horrible 
legend follow closely what actually occurred, as it was told to me by a now unbiased 
eye-witness of the event. On the arrival of the ship, the Silecian Superior, with the 
great spirit of the early Catholic missionaries of the north, assuming full responsi- 
bility for the conduct of the savages, ordered them unbound and set at liberty. They 
were then led to a great feast that had been prepared for them. Half starved from 
their recent captivity, and, moreover, ever unaccustomed to such bounty, they 
gorged their bellies beyond nature’s tolerance. And in the agonies of indigestion 
many of them died. 

Not to meddlers with the lives of others shall one look for understanding. No 
horrors of experience deterred these Christians from the ruthless pursuit of their 
benevolence. They fed their wards and clothed and trained them; and when, after a 
course of years and in spite of a continued replenishment of healthy savages from the 
wilderness of Tierra del Fuego, the human material had about all died, the mission 
went the way of bankrupt things; it was put on the block and sold. 

Port Harris now became the center of a business enterprise. The first act of the new 
manager was to set up a keg of beer for the man who should throw a lariat around 
the cross of the church. Down came the cross amid the hurrahs of the crowd. They 
built a sawmill and a shipyard; and there on Dawson Island was eventually launched 
the famous and ill-fated Sara, the largest ship ever built in Chile. 

It was dark when, escorted by soldiers and towed by their launch, we entered 
Harris Bay. The electric lights of the little town sparkled through the rigging of 
vessels at the wharf, and were reflected wavering in the black water. And, if the 
illusion of our isolation had been shattered by the sudden appearance of belligerent 
men, we now, having cleared ourselves of a mistaken identity with pirates that had 
brought them down on us, rejoiced in the good fortune of the port’s friendship. The 
Kathleen was to be properly docked and put in order. 


The whistle of the mill announced the dawn; and, as its echoes died, the whirr and 
screaming of the saw, the clatter of the donkey engine, the clamor of falling planks, 
the shouts of bosses, the wild cursing of bullock drivers, the whole noise of a mill’s 
activity filled the air. 

We moved the Kathleen to an anchorage abreast of the slip and waited for the 
tide for docking her. The bright paint on her sides, the varnish of her spars, the pol- 
ished brass of her fittings, glistened in the sun; and from her masthead waved the 
stars and stripes. What though in sailing she had almost come to pieces! There was 
in her appearance such trimness and beauty, and in the flag such huge prestige of 
power as must, we thought, excite beholders to respect and admiration. 


(29) 


ViOnY AGEING 


I was in the cabin, at work. 

Suddenly the mate, who had been ashore, burst in, his face crimson with passion. 

‘The carabineros are here,’’ he cried. ‘“They’ve ordered the flag down. I told them 
to go to Hell. They want your papers.”’ 

Now I am too old an American not to have had the percentage of my patriotism 
somewhat worn by travel and diluted by reflection; and in my heart I’d dipped the 
flag a hundred times to other flags that were the symbol of virtues un-American. The 
Norwegian mate’s Americanism was one hundred plus; and so fiercely raged the flames 
of outraged loyalty as he stood there before me, that I was both impressed and afraid. 
So, concealing my passport and sailing dispatch in my shirt, and, prudently, leaving 
him and his ungovernable rage behind, I went ashore. 

Two carabineros, splendidly accoutred, stood there. A crowd was gathering. The 
faces of the soldiers were characteristic of the men who compose that efficient arm 
of repression and order; they were stupid and sullen. And for that important moment 
they wore that peculiar expression of ludicrously fierce dignity that is affected by 
inferiors. 

‘What do you want?”’ I asked the sergeant. 

He spoke excitedly in Spanish, which I didn’t understand. Guessing that he had 
asked for my passport, I gave it to him. 

Unfolding its maplike expanse, turning it this way and that and over and back, 
studying it at length and comprehending not a word, he folded it up in a complete 
mess and returned it. 

“Your dispatch.”’ | 

I gave him that. Whether he could read or not I do not know; it took him a long 
time. Finally, seemingly well satisfied, he gave it back to me. And then, fiercely and 
in Castillian that I clearly understood, he thundered— 

‘Take that flag down within five minutes.”’ 

Argument with one who couldn’t understand was useless. I told him, smnilinene 
. that the flag would not be lowered, pushed through the crowd and went aboard and 
below. 

And that, until a few days later they flocked around like children, begging to be 
photographed, was the last we saw of the blood-curdling carabineros. 


Little but the burying ground remains in commercial Port Harris to recall the glory 
of its Christian past. The wooden ecclesiastical buildings have been converted into 
offices, a store, a pool-room; the cabin cells have grown into dwelling houses, and 
these have multiplied and spread out over the half cleared environs in all the slovenly 
disorder of a busy frontier town. There is the squalor of where selfishness prevails 
instead of charity—and the exuberance of life. 

A few miles eastward of the town is a lofty naked hive-shaped hill that flanks the 


(30) 


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PORT HARRIS 


entrance of the bay; and on its top, sharply silhouetted against the sky, stands a tiny 
Christian chapel. One day we started off afoot to visit it. 

Our way led through stately groves of the southern evergreen and over rolling 
pastures following sheep paths that wandered aimlessly through a low growth of the 
thorny califata bush. The sheep were everywhere, and little lambs bleated and scam- 
pered before us. The hill rises abruptly many hundred feet from the surrounding plain; 
standing upon its top we overlooked the world. 

It was a balmy golden day, and the long shadows of the afternoon lay across the 
land. The glistening town and its checkerboard of gardens and meadows, and the 
wharf and shipping, looked like a child’s play village. To the north and west lay the 
flat pasture lands of Dawson Island; and from the warmth and seeming cultivation of 
this scene the eyes turned southward where, beyond a waste of bog and forest-covered 
foothills, stood the mountains wrapped in winter. 

On the bare wind-swept summit of the hill was the chapel, a little wooden house 
silvered by rain and snow, dilapidated and abandoned, but with its rustic cross still 
at the gable end gleaming against the purple zenith. Within was nothing but the 
wooden walls and floor and roof, and the flimsy framework of a rail, and a rough 
altar built-of hewn boards. 

Yet on the walls of this dead church, that had been reared to wean the native from 


(31) 


VOYAGING 


his savage pleasure, the imperishable savagery of Christian men had scrawled as if 
in irony a kind of epitaph. Lovers had written up their names as a record of some 
happiness achieved behind the altar rail, and lonely souls had pictured their desires 
that others coming there might read them and be glad. 

‘“Disgusting!’’ I said as the mate’s sudden entrance startled me out of my vicari- 
ous pleasure: and, having perused the whole collection, I picked my way through the 
debris of broken communion-whiskey bottles that littered the floor and went out. 

And all at once the golden beauty and the silence of that afternoon spoke nothing 
but the magnificence and utter heartlessness of God; and one was made to feel the 
pain of solitude. Man was not formed to bear it; and that his spirit yearns for contact 
with another is itself a mockery of solitude. 


The sheep farms of Dawson Island were under the management of a Scotchman, 
Kenneth Morrison, who was established at the Estancia Valentine, twenty miles 
north of Port Harris. I have no sweeter memory than of our visit there. 

Morrison had ridden to the port to meet us. He was a short powerful man of forty- 
five, rather taciturn, a pipe smoker given to long silences; yet by the subtle charm of 
his blunt manner and the veiled kindness of his blue eyes one was at once reminded 
of the affection with which everyone spoke of him. He was a solemn jester, and his 
invitation to us to ‘‘come and see the cannibals at Valentine’’ was characteristic of 
his way of concealing what came near his heart. 

At noon of a clear grey day we set out together on horseback. For some miles the 
road led through the woods, giving the impression that we were penetrating the 
interior of the island, until, after a glimpse of the bay where we had lain one night 
at anchor, we emerged upon the coast, and its broad beach became our roadway. 
While our horses labored through the heavy sand, or picked a painful way over long 
gravel stretches, we were amused by Morrison’s fantastic yarns, or, in the silences, 
thrilled by the wild bird life that abounded on the shore. Flocks of fat kelp-geese 
took to water as we neared them, and raced to sea with a frenzied flapping of their 
wings like motors. Small golden-brown hawks flew up in pairs and tamely perched 
on branches near enough to touch, and watched us pass. 

Everywhere the shore was strewn with huge sawn logs awaiting transportation to 
the mill. We came upon a gang of men with bullocks hauling the logs down to the 
water’s edge, and chaining them into a raft for the rising tide to float. A mile away 
we had heard this bullock gang at work, roaring and cursing. Armed with long poles, 
they seemed to struggle with the huge, slow-witted animals, beating and prodding 
them to pull together; and the wild energy and power of the living groups fitted the 
stark grandeur of the scene. 

After some hours of riding along the beach weleft it,and scrambling up the steep bar- 
ranco to the higher land above, travelled again through woods and marshy stretches. 


(32) 


VOT AG LNG 


“Here,’’ said Morrison solemnly as we ascended a hill, ‘‘is just halfway to my 
place.”’ 

And, as he continued with solicitous inquiries about our strength to go on, we 
reached the top, and saw below us, scarcely a mile away, amid smooth, cultivated 
fields, the brightly painted buildings of his farm. 

Then down the hill and over the meadowlands we raced, and, with a pack of 
collies leaping and barking around us, reached the house. Our hostess came with a 
sweet grace to welcome us, and made our first arrival seem a homecoming. 

The settlement of the farm stood, an oasis of cultivation, in the midst of a prairie 
bordering on the sea. Surrounded by flower gardens with neat borders and gravel 
paths, the house was as the countenance of quiet happiness. And the security and 
warmth, the studied comforts and the homely luxuries within fulfilled that thought 
and told what peace could be achieved in the most utter solitude. 

Not the least source of amusement to the Morrisons were his eternal jokes; and that 
they had never destroyed her simple belief in him was evidence of his own predomi- 
nating kindness. At dinner Morrison produced a little phial of oil of cloves. 

“What is that, Kenneth?”’ said his wife, noticing it. 

“That,” he replied, ‘is something that makes you young.”’ 

And we entered together upon a discussion of the miraculous properties of what we 
alleged to be a highly concentrated glandular fluid obtained from crude petroleum, a 
true elixir of life. 

“The contents of that bottle, Mrs. Morrison,’’ I said, ‘‘if taken in one dose, would 
make a man of, say, forty-five a youth of sixteen.”’ 

Mrs. Morrison looked for a moment incredulously at our stolid faces. 

“Kenneth!” she cried in a sudden panic of belief, seizing his arm that held the 
phial. “Don’t take too much of it!”’ | 

That night before the open grate with those kind people there beside us, conversing 
of their interests, of their tranquil daily life complete with ordered occupation, I 
thought that here indeed, in this remote and solitary place, was happiness. 

And yet for what comfort was she reading books on ‘‘New Thought,”’ and what 
did Morrison conceal behind his jesting? Even the very bliss of peace evokes the 
sorrow of reflection. 

It was late afternoon of a most lovely day that, heavy-hearted as at leaving home, 
we rode away. Morrison again came with us, for we had grown close. The strait was 
quiet as a mountain lake, and in the south, beyond its turquoise plain, the snowy 
ranges glowed flamingo-red against a lemon sky. While the high peaks still flamed, 
the full golden moon came up beside them, so that no darkness followed, and the 
night became a quieter reflection of the day. There never was a night more beautiful. 

Morrison stayed with us until the day before we sailed. Then he jumped on his 
horse, cried, ‘‘Don’t let the cannibals eat you!’’ laughed, and galloped off. I walked 


(33) 


VOR AG en aG 


quickly away. Suddenly I stopped and looked back. Morrison, far off, that very 
instant reined his horse and turned. Each with one impulse raised an arm. Farewell! 

Meanwhile, under skilled hands, the repairs to the Kathleen were progressing. 
A further injury that she had sustained while being drawn up on to the slip had re- 
vealed her fundamental weakness. The cradle that had been built for that operation 
had not been properly designed and the boat’s whole weight came to rest upon two 
points. Her thin sides and ribs yielding to that concentrated pressure were bent in 
abruptly as much as four inches. By mere good fortune she was not stove. Neverthe- 
less, it was a disclosure of the fact that her hull was entirely too light in construction 
to withstand such strains as her weight and the pressure of her sails would subject 
her to. Examination showed this weakness to have been responsible for our mishap 
on the day of sailing, for several streaks of planking on both sides had been sprung 
apart. She was like a sieve. I think that in the whole course of our adventures we had 
no moment of discouragement so black as when we beheld the forlorn Kathleen 
emerging from the water, with her sides bent in and water streaming out from every 
seam. And others showed discouragement since, for the last damage, the shipyard 
men were entirely at fault. 

That night the iconoclastic manager of the Port Harris establishment, Sefior Mar- 
cou, called upon us. It was pouring rain, and we were seated in the little cabin which, 
owing to the cradle having been removed from under the boat, was tilted at an un- 
comfortable angle of about thirty degrees. Sefior Marcou was a rotund, red-cheeked, 
bright-eyed, jovial Frenchman, demonstrative, kind, irascible, and—as he proved to 
us—a generous and entertaining host. ‘‘Look out for Marcou,’’ they'd said in Punta 
Arenas—but they’d say anything. Little of his vivacity was revealed that dreary 
night that he first called to pay his respects: the burden of some responsibility for our 
boat’s condition weighed heavily on his mind. 

‘“‘What can we do about your boat?’’ he asked at once. 

We asked for very little——and he gave us everything. 

“Well,’’ he said finally, ‘‘we’ll give your boat a thorough overhauling and make 
it fit to go to the Horn in.”’ 

‘But I can’t pay for it!’’ I exclaimed. 

“No matter,’ he replied laughingly, ‘‘and now come home to dinner.” 

And so it happened that for two weeks we were the guests of that good fellow, 
lunching and dining daily at his house, and, regularly twice a week, visiting the 
movies, where we sat aloft in the frigid managerial box and looked at faded, flicker- 
ing pictures of puff-sleeved romances of pre-Spanish-war days. 

There was little that I could do to repay such hospitality; but one service presented 
itself. The greatest achievement of Dawson’s shipworks was the construction of 
Chile’s Great Eastern, the auxiliary conglomerate, Sara. Her glorious launching had 
marked the realization of her constructors’ highest dreams of achievement, and her 


(34) 











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THE KATHLEEN OF NEW YORK 


VOYAGING 


untimely death by fire was their grave. Dawson lived upon the memory of Sara. And 
that time might never dim for them the recollection of her glory I would paint her 
portrait. 

An unused photographic studio was put at my disposal and I went to work. Con- 
struction plans, photographs, the counsel of everyone that had worked on the ship 
or seen her, were at my disposal. Upon a dark green sea, against a background of the 
gleaming snow peaks of Dawson and a thunder dark sky, I put her, sailing, all sails 
set, before the wind; and in the foreground, heedless of anachronism, appeared the 
little Kathleen. As the main body of the ship was brought to correctness, I began 
upon such an elaboration of details as only the infallible records of the plans and the 
loving, all-cherishing memories of the ship’s creators could have suggested: to the’ 
last block and halyard, and the smallest detail of the electric winch, to the captain's 
uniform and the contour of the cook’s nose, all, all, as I was told of them, I painted on. 

‘Lindo, lindo!’’ cried Marcou, as quarter-hourly he ran to watch my progress. 

The fame of my portrait of the incomparable Sara soon spread to every house, 
and my work became constantly interrupted by crowds of curious, enthusiastic sight- 
seers. But, being through my ignorance of Spanish unable to understand a word that 
was said, I became after a time almost oblivious to their presence and could finally 
hold doggedly to my work in the very midst of a riotous and pushing mob. 

There was only one group of visitors that became intolerable, my friends the cara- 
bineros. Every day they called, clamoring for prints of the pictures I had taken of 
them. And their demands were beyond all reason; indeed, considering my limited 
stock of materials, impossible. In vain did I try with gestures to explain my feelings 
inthe matter. They only talked the more volubly, stupidly oblivious to my not under- 
standinganything. It is singularly disturbing, even humiliating, to be addressed persist- 
ently ina strange tongue. You feel bereft of dignity and utterly and unworthily stupid. 

After careful consideration of this problem I hit upon the expedient of swiftly 
reversing the situation by pouring out a torrent of English upon my annoyers, and 
observed the effect with much amusement. But still they came, these carabineros. 

Finally, one day about the hour they were due, I locked the door. They came, they 
knocked, they thundered. There was a peeking through cracks, and a low-toned con- 
sultation; then redoubled thundering. The view of the interior of the place was ob- 
scured by opaque glass that went to half the windows’ height; but above this and 
along the whole long side of the room were the clear lights. Presently I heard a bump- 
ing and a rumbling. Casks were being brought! They stood these in a row and 
mounted them; and I beheld those five, dull, ugly faces peering in on me. Never 
before had I guessed my power of concentration. By not the flicker of an eye did I 
betray my knowledge of their presence there—but calmly proceeded with my paint- 
ing of the forty-eight little stars of the American flag at the Kathleen's peak—wishing 
that soldier's wits might comprehend the irony of that. 


(36) 


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thleen, there was I rebuilding, as it were, the Sara. And when at last I bore her 
umphantly, with all flags flying, to Marcou, then, on that very day, the Kathleen 
slid down from the ways and floated in her element again. 


wtp 





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CHAPTER VI 


SLAUGHTER COVE 


AILING had become to us an event of such rare occurrence, and had thus far 
been the prelude of such dramatic and almost catastrophic happenings that, 
if the interest of our friends with its expression of farewells and cheers had 
not given it the color of a festival, the excitement of our own tumultuous 

fears and hopes would alone have made for us the weighing of our anchor one of 
life’s high moments. 

Three weeks had passed like one; and although the hospitality of Dawson had 
showed no signs of waning and its simple ways and wonders, rather than wearying 
us might have become our habit for as many months, our boat was finished. She was, 
as it was said, fit for the Horn; and, as if the Horn were that consummation to which 
our lives were purposed, it held us by a law stronger than the allurements of pleasant 
ease. 

What forces drive men on to the deliberate quest of miseries and danger? Are they 
remote yet deeply rooted habits of a race which once delighted in adventure for the 
gain it held, that still assert themselves against the very soul’s desire for peace and 
the mind’s clear understanding of the paths that lead there? Is it a far-visioned life- 
force maintaining itself against the disintegrating allurements of ease, a militant 
expression of the subconscious will that’s cognizant of individual weakness, an asser- 
tion in contraries of the complex of inferiority? Is bravery the cloak of cowardice? 

Loving the crowd too much and shunning solitude we seek it. Fearing our own 
selves’ insufficiency we must forever make a trial of it alone. Because of all things we 
desire slothfully to lie abed we are possessed with energy to be about before the dawn. 
Never, it seems to have been willed, may men enjoy that happiness their souls desire. 


(38) 


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So, in the enthusiasm of the great humbug of rejoicing, amid the farewells of 
friendships that are real, toasted and blessed and laden with gifts, we sail away. The 
schooners in the harbor dip their flags, the sawmill whistle shrieks. We're off! Port 
Harris is a bank of waving hands—then a memory. 


There was a strong east wind abeam and a choppy sea, and the sky was heavy and 
threatening. Tree Bluff, bare, brown and huge, stood over us as we left the bay, a 
mountain dome above a wilderness of forest. Southward of that the coast was ever 
wilder and more mountainous. White summits touched the leaden sky and under 
them the somber green and purple forests clothed the slopes. 

After five hours of tumultuous sailing we entered the sheltered waters of Meskim 
Channel, the mountain shores drew close and towered over us, and suddenly it was 
vastly quiet as if all sound and movement in the world had stopped, and we heard 
only the silver rippling of the wavelets on our sides as the soft wind bore us on. Then 
living creatures came to welcome us. There was a quick soft momentary tearing of 
the water, and another and again; and porpoises were all about us, playing like young 
dogs. They leaped and darted back and forth across our bows, or followed at our side, 
or dove beneath the keel, rolling white bellies that glowed like emeralds through the 
clear depths. 


(39) 


VOYAGING 


Thus gloriously escorted, we proceeded, sailing quietly, to where, at a narrowing 
of the channel as it turned, we found a most peaceful little crescent cove, clean 
beached and forest bordered, utterly remote and still; on the wind’s last breath we 
entered there and anchored. 

For days we loitered at that anchorage unwilling to forsake a spot that one might 
choose to spend a lifetime in. Then, too, it was dead calm. At nightfall it began to 
rain. All night it poured and all the morning of the following day, a cold dreary rain 
that fell from winter altitudes and chilled us, so that we loved best the snug dry 
world of the boat’s cabin. 

And then it cleared. And the warm sun came out so beautifully that the wind held 
its breath as if in awe of the world’s loveliness. We embarked in the little skiff and 
rowed for miles through water so tranquil that the mountains were reflected in it 
to the minutest detail of their splendour; and by the low sun was revealed such a 
wonderland of rocks and streams and groves above the distant shore, as set us flaming 
with desire to claim it for ourselves and make it habitable. We thought of home- 
steads there on some entrancing cove, with rustic bridges to the little islands, and 
landing places, and cultivated fields and meadowlands and gardens—it is so easy for 
the mind to make an Eden of the distant wilderness. 

Such was that distant shore; yet at our backs, crowding the narrow beach on which 
we stood, we might observe its counterpart without illusion. It was a dense and 
tangled forest, with the sodden bog that was its soil cluttered with fallen trunks and 
rankly overgrown with thorny underbrush. It was a jungle that only some dire 
necessity of man would ever venture to reclaim. All things look good from far away; 
and it is man’s eternally persistent childlike faith in the reality of that illusion that 
has made him the triumphant restless being that he is. 

Always the farthest peaks appear the fairest, and if again we weighed our anchor 
and to the gentle east wind spread our sail, it was only that the very glories of what 
we had seen stimulated our faith in unimaginable beauties that must lie beyond. 

It was the faintest breeze that bore us up the channel the morning that we sailed; 
the sun shone for a little while; and then, into the clear blue field of heaven there 
stole so many little fleecelike clouds, like sheep cropping their way over virgin pas- 
ture, that at last their flocks covered the firmament as with a woolen mantle and hid 
the sun. And with the greyness there fell a breathless hush over the world. 

We had reached the western point of Wickam Island where Meskim Channel joins 
Brenton Sound to form there the broad fiord known as Port Owen that penetrates the 
heart of Dawson Island almost to the western shore. Its whole unbroken expanse was 
before us to the far-off, snow-topped mountain range that closed its end. In that fiord 
alone were wonders of wild mountain scenery to have held one there for weeks of 
exploration. But the wind had failed us and we yielded to the current of a strong ebb 
tide and let our boat be borne through the archipelago of little islands that cluster 


(40) 


‘el teed 


VOYAGING 















Faden Cove » Prenton Sow ase 
Lak SBA~LES. Low 72-27 
Views NE ty fm Eash row 


eur eichorage Ost 4. x. —_—_ 























around the extremity of Wickam Island. Southward we proceeded through a maze ot 
these, without a wind, seemingly so motionless on the calm breast of the tide that it 
appeared as if the land streamed past us to display itself. 

It was late afternoon when, having emerged from the hundred islands into the 
broad water of Brenton Sound, we came abreast of a promising anchorage behind a 
reef. We pulled the Kathleen to a berth behind the shelter of a screen of trees, dropped 
anchor and moored her to the shore; and again, at rest in this remote and quiet 
solitude, by virtue of the comforts of our boat at home in it, we felt profound secu- 
rity and peace. 

And it appeared to be not alone the human spirit that felt the security of that hour 
and place. Wild fowl, quite unaccustomed to the intrusions of man, swam fearlessly 
about, and a most loving pair of ducks circled tranquilly around the boat delighting 
in their mated happiness. For a long time we observed them with great pleasure, and 
then, from some strange ugly depths in us or a perverted fancy of the mind, the will 
arose to kill them. Waiting for a moment that brought them close together, the mate 
at one shot killed them both. We plucked them of their glossy plumage and threw 
the feathers overboard. The tide was slack, and, as if to force upon us a recognition of 
the sacrilege we had committed, the feathers and the blood-clouded water clung about 
us until almost dark. Undoubtedly, there is in man the lust to kill; but there is, too, 
a loathing for it that flows from the source of all human kindness and response to 
beauty. 

At twilight there came a sudden and unnatural darkness. Black clouds hung low 
over the mountains and from them burst a hurricane and wind that in ten minutes 
churned the placid surface of the sound into a seething maelstrom of white water. 
The spray flew over us like driving rain; and from the close shelter of the cabin we 
listened to the whistling and the whipping of the shrouds and halyards and the spite- 
ful lapping of the wind-swept tide against our sides. 

So, furiously, for an hour the gale raged, and then was quiet. And at bedtime 
through the broken clouds the stars appeared, showing with dazzling brightness 


(41) 











VOYAGING 


through the wind clean spaces. Night cleaned the heavens and left them cloudl less for 
the dawning of another day. . 


memories of the night before, we named it se Cove. 





CHAPTER VII 


“CANNIBALS” 


F the many hundred Indians who, as has been told, once populated Daw- 

son Island, there remain five; and these, being of that particularly savage 

Alacaloof race that still sparsely inhabits the channel islands, or, more 

exactly, the channels off the extreme southern mainland of Chile—persist- 

ing there in the utter degradation of their pristine savagery and the enjoyment of 

their unregenerate and naked misery—these five came then to the channels of Dawson 

Island of their own volition, as to a hunting ground that might sustain them. And it 

does; they live. Where, in which one of the remote fiords and inlets of the extensive 

region of Dawson Island and the adjacent mainland, this wild band might be en- 

countered no one could tell us; for a long time they had not been seen. Yet our adven- 

turous imaginations had been so stimulated by everything we had read or been told of 

the treachery and murderous depravity of the channel Indians that we hurried with 

reckless curiosity to meet with them. And it was with this ardent hope that we had 

deviated from the straight course of our voyage to explore the waters about Wickam 
Island. 

It was a cloudless morning that we sailed again and the sun shone with the grateful 
warmth of a fair day in early spring, for October is our April in the Southern Hemi- 
sphere. Above the mountains of the south of Dawson that rose from the far shore of 
Brenton Sound appeared a distant table-land of ice and snow so lofty and so vast in 
its extent, and so unmarked with any break or peak to give it scale, that it dwarfed 
those nearer heights, which, seen on the clouded yesterday standing alone against the 
sky, had seemed immense. It was the ice-capped region south of Gabriel Channel that 
We saw. 


(43) 


VtO YA, G iN 


! 
Aaah, 
ef 


SS 


ete 2 SMO 


— ~ - — Ser . “Ne 
slid Ath Vet 





= 


WICKAM ISLAND 


We had heard a vague report of an almost unknown canal that extended clear 
through Dawson Island from Brenton Sound to Gabriel Channel, making two islands 
of what appeared on the charts as one. That we should find errors in the charts was 
not improbable. Large tracts of this far southwestern land-and-water region have 
been only superficially surveyed, and future exploration will undoubtedly reveal 
more intricacies of that tortuous geography. 

We crossed the blue sound to a deep bay that appeared on its southern shore and 
which, by the disposition of the mountains around it, suggested the existence there of 
that mysterious passage which we hoped to find. The faint wind failed us entirely as 
we made the entrance, and we came to anchor. Although quite obviously land en- 
closed, the mate, not satisfied, embarked in the skiff and rowed off toward the head 
of the bay that lay southeasterly two miles away where a valley opened inland. And 
through the hours that he was gone I sprawled about on deck in the sensual enjoy- 
ment, there in early spring in that far-famed worst region in the world, of such deli- 
cious warmth of sunshine, and such Alpine and Pacific splendours of white mountain 
tops, and green forests and blue sea, as the imagination of man ever awakened to 
desire. 

On the mate’s return, he reported that the bay terminated in shoals and flats and 


(44) 





VOYAGING 


that a stream entered there up which he had been able to take the skiff some little 
way; and that on the shore where the stream joined the bay were the frames of the 
Indian wigwams. And at that our hopes beat high. 

We sailed again and beat a few miles to the eastward, anchoring after nightfall in 
an almost landlocked cove. 

Next day in the semi-darkness of a clouded dawn we made the open water, and 
with the wind continuing faint and contrary worked our way slowly down the 
sound. 

It was near noon. The day had settled into dreary greyness. From time to time it 
rained and simultaneously grew dead calm as if the feeble wind lacked strength to 
penetrate the curtain of the falling drops; and the monotonous whispering of the 
tain, absorbing the whole universe of lesser sounds, became itself as the immense 
silence of a lifeless world. 

Suddenly, from the far-off forest of the dark mountain side across the water, faintly 
through the falling shroud of rain, alone and clear above the silence, came the bark- 
ing of a dog. 

The solitude was gone: The dog’s voice spoke the presence in that wilderness of 
man; and in an instant our imaginations peopled the dark shadows of the forest with 
lurking savages; felt eyes peering at us stealthily through the interstices. And the 
succeeding silence became the ominous hush of treachery. 

The rain ceased. The wind came; darkening the water. From the edge of the forest 
of the northern shore arose a column of smoke. We steered for it. 

Staring through the glasses we discovered two overturned boats on the beach, and 
above them in the shadows of the trees two huts. Presently, as we drew nearer, there 
appeared against the darkness of the doorways two faces peering out, each luminous 
and round and motionless as a moon. A man came out and strolled down to the boats. 

One long tack carried us a few yards to leeward of the settlement. We dropped 
anchor there; and while we put our deck to rights the man on the shore, who had 
been watching us attentively, walked up abreast of us and stood at the watetr’s edge 
continuing his scrutiny. To our hail he made no reply. 

While we were tremendously excited at thus fortunately encountering cannibals, 
there was nothing in the appearance of things to warrant any course but that which 
instinctive courtesy prescribed for a chance meeting between human beings in the 
wilderness. So, putting into my pocket a few cakes of the greatest delicacy that our 
stores contained, Huyler’s chocolate emergency ration, I embarked with the mate 
for the shore. 

The silent being there awaited us, and, as we landed, gave us a helping hand to 
draw the skiff above the water’s reach. 

He was a man of about sixty, as well as one can judge the age of strangers of an 
unfamiliar race. He was of medium height and powerful big-bellied build, and was 


(45) 


VOYAGING 


\\\ All 
fi SoS 


\ 
5 
' J 
ban) 
EL J 
yi! 


MS 
Sa a ee rear 





ga Nae eee EAR ais 
eR, 4 ORI, ry ENS 


INDIAN COVE 

clad in filthy tattered and patched remnants of a miscellancous assortment of white 
men’s garments. His skin was swarthy. The face was broad, flat-nosed, with small 
eyes wide apart. He had good teeth, small, widely spaced and jagged. Altogether, 
his countenance if not beaming with good will was quite free of sinister expression. 
He was unassumingly at ease with us, not over curious, and entirely friendly. We 
shook his hard-skinned pudgy hand and greeted him. 

‘Very bad weather,” he remarked in a horrible dialect which he later referred to 
as Castilian. 

And from this strikingly familiar opening of conversation he proceeded, as we 
sauntered down the beach, to ask for gifts—tobacco, flour, sugar. 

As we approached the dwellings another man, a younger one, came out and leaned 
against the boats. He nodded to us. He was lame, and his right arm was crippled. He 
showed it to me. It was so terribly inflamed and swollen from the fingers to the elbow 
that I could make nothing of the cause. 

Meanwhile, as we stood conversing on the shingle below the huts, the two moon 
faces, unperturbed, looked at us from the darkness of their doorways. They were of 


(46) 





VOYAGING 


two women, somberly clad, each seated on her threshold with her knees drawn up in 
that posture of patient endurance and unconscious contemplation of the ancient seers 
of William Blake. The huts, or wigwams as they should perhaps be called, stood side 
by side in the grass that bordered the shingle. Over them hung the low limbs of the 
forest trees, giving them shelter from the wind and rain at the expense of such warmth 
as the occasional sun might offer. They were as similar as two bird’s nests and not 
unlike them in the primitive yet entirely substantial method of their construction. 
About a ten-foot circle small sapling poles had been stuck into the ground. These 
were then bent archlike toward the center and secured with bindings of grass. Other 
poles were warped diagonally about this skeleton dome and bound at the intersection 
to give thestructure strength. It was covered with skins and rags of canvas and close- 
leafed boughs of the cozgwe tree, leaving an aperture for entrance on the side that faced 
the sea and one at the apex for the escape of smoke. The sides were banked with sod 
and grass to a foot’s height. 

One of the guardians of the doorway appeared to be very old; her face was wrinkled 
and her hair thin and white. She spoke no ‘‘Castilian,’’ but conversed, from time to 
time, in rich guttural tones in the native tongue. The other woman was about forty. 
Her voice, too, was deep and rich, with a mournful monotony of cadence; and the 
expression of her face was at once impressively sad and kind. This younger woman 
stood to let us enter. She was tall and lithe and had a manner of great dignity. 

True dignity is a grace of the spirit that transcends all limitations of age and race 
and birth and opportunity; it is bestowed, as it were, out of the universal loving- 
kindness of God as a visible token of that noble order of beings who, respecting 
themselves and reverencing the unknown, haveachieved maturity within themselves. 

A fire of logs burned in the center of the wigwam. On either side were beds of skins 
matted into cozy human-nestlike hollows by long days and nights of sleeping in 
them. On the ground behind the fire lay a hunk of half-dried sea-lion meat, the leg 
of a guanaco and the carcass of an enormous Fuegian rat, the coati. A well-made grass 
basket and a Winchester rifle were the only utensils or implements there. It was warm 
and dry within that wigwam; and there is no doubt that even in the most severe 
winter weather one could be more comfortable in such a native shelter and live with 
more economy of fuel and labor than in any temporary house a white man might 
construct. 

The boats that lay on the shore were dilapidated and, one would say, unseaworthy. 
One was a cast-off flat-bottomed white man’s skiff, the other a rough thing of similar 
model built of wide boards of driftwood. And yet the coati and the remains of gua- 
naco that we had seen showed that these people had recently crossed, if not the wide 
and treacherous sound from Tierra del Fuego, at least the considerable bodies of 
water that indent the south shore of Admiralty Sound. 

I had distributed my gifts of chocolate. The Indians were neither impressed by my 


(47) 


Ve OrY-A GINS. 


generosity nor curious about what the silver-covered packages contained. They 
thanked me and either pocketed them or laid them aside. The younger woman asked 
me for soap. 

We returned to the Kathleen accompanied by the old man. While we assembled 
an assortment of supplies for him, he waited, seated on the deck, looking abjectly 
forlorn and filthy amid the trim surroundings of the boat. We bestowed upon him 
a fair quantity of tobacco, flour, sugar, soap powder, beans, matches and bread. He 
thanked us with quiet politeness, saying, ‘‘Not much, but very good.”’ 

It seemed to me when finally I had brought this savage back to the shore and stood 
there with him for a moment at our parting, that there was little evidence of an abyss 
of centuries between us. Miserably poor in goods, slothful, and filthy with neglect, 
he was the type of his race; yet among the enlightened races of the earth are individ- 
uals, and even classes, whom circumstances or temperament havereduced toapparently 
that same condition, or who, in reaction to the pace of civilization, to its burdens and 
responsibilities, yearn for the freedom of vagabondage. How thin a veneer upon the 
deep substratum of humanity must our culture be when, through desire or circum- 
stances, men can so easily revert ten thousand years! 

We waved farewell as we sailed off, but there was no response. From those dark 
doorways in the shadow of the forest the two moons again looked out, as if eternally. 
And if they saw us it could only be that by the course we took we crossed their fixed 
and far-off seaward vision. So little did we count: had we been gods we only should 
have known it. 

That afternoon a little before dark, we entered Indian Cove on the south shore of 
Brenton Sound, and anchored there; and for two nights and a whole day we continued 
at that anchorage. It was dead calm and the rain fell as gently as a mist, and mur- 
mured on the glassy surface of the water. From the forest came the sweet trilling of 
little birds. Flocks of wild ducks and geese fed on the flats or swam about us. King- 
fishers flashed their courtship: it was the mating season, and of the very stillness was 
the breath of love. 7 

A little river empties into that cove. Above its broad and shallow mouth it flows 
from mountain heights by falls and rapids through a deep ravine in the darkness of 
the overarching forest. With great difficulty I made my way on foot along the bank. 
Luxuriant parasitic growth encumbers the forest; mosses and small plants grow thick 
upon the lower trunks of living trees, whose roots, as if in struggle to escape from 
strangulation, rear themselves out of the mucky soil, until unbalanced by their own ‘ 
rank growth of foliage and the encumbering weight of clinging vines and fungi, they 
fall—and are engulfed in the devouring vegetation. 

The forest floor is many tiered, a structure built of trunks fallen crosswise upon 
fallen trunks, a sodden, rotting mass of barriers all overgrown with greenery, with 
pits between choked up with thorny underbrush. 


(48 ) 





VOYA GEN G 


Anos Yt, se 
Zs Zs 
G “GEN 


Te. a =a M YY 
z= = SG gare ee 
= —_ Bp (Wize 





SAILING FREE 


Making so little progress here, I struggled up the steep sides of the ravine to a 
hilltop free of trees that held our hope of better footing. Yet even there, under last 
season's matted growth of grass, was bog as saturated as the spongy hollows of 
the forest. 

On the shores of Indian Cove were the remains of several encampments identical 
with that living one that we had visited. With the long grass grown up about their 
trampled hollows they resembled the twin nests of some huge bird. The framework 
of one pair was still intact. They stood in a most green and pleasant grove beside a 
little rill of water, and like those others, faced the water. 

One could fancy dwelling there in the achievement of that leisure which is the 
heart’s desire; and, from the hut’s snug warmth and darkness, contemplating hours 
long, for days and years, that most absolute, unchanging and eternal universe of sea 
and mountain peaks and stars, until at last thought ripened into understanding. 

“T then asked Ezekiel,’’ writes Blake of a conversation with the prophet, ‘‘why he 
ate dung, and lay so long on his right and left side. He answer’d, “The desire of raising 
other men into a perception of the infinite’: this the North American tribes practise, 
and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease 
or gratification ?”’ 


(49) 


VOY AGING 


We, to whom the struggle for material comforts has become an obsession, have 
vauntingly named our pathway progress: our struggle may, however, be as well con- 
sidered to have been a degenerate weakening, under the pressure of material discom- 
forts, of the will toward leisure—a weakening that became a rout, a rout that we 
to save our pride name purpose—a purpose whose achievement in the denial of leisure 
we call civilization. And now at last, having become utterly and irretrievably in- 
volved in the disaster of materialism and having debauched the human soul with 
restlessness, we make luxury our glory, and abandon leisure to the childhood of the 
race. 

The second night in Indian Cove it cleared. Fierce wind squalls beat down from the 
mountain tops, careening us and howling in our rigging. The water rippled angrily 
against the boat’s sides. The wind had changed. 


(50) 


ae ee ee ~~ 





CHAPTER VIII 


“ROLL ON” 


E turned out early, in that portentous hour that precedes the dawn. 

Above mountainous dark land the cloudless sky was luminous with 

stars; it was a breathless morning, clear and sweet. Then impercep- 

tibly the daylight came and the gold of sunrise flung itself across the 
heavens, kindled the mountain peaks and overflowed the world. A gentle wind arose 
and bore us out. O fresh, clear, fair west wind! That day we blessed it, and the next 
—and then for five interminable wind-bound weeks we cursed its obstinacy. 

With the fair wind and freshening, and bright wind clouds streaming up across the 
sky, we sailed down Brenton Sound and passed the channel south of the Tucker 
Islands. Before us, due east by the compass, lay the green-blue length of Admiralty 
Sound, white-capped and swept by purple shadows. The sun shone dazzling bright 
on snowy peaks and glistening walls of rock, displaying all the details of the land in 
crystal clarity—bare golden hills, and shaded wonderlands of forest, and dark ravines 
that gushed out silver streams. It was a day so opulently beautiful that the pure exu- 
berance of the wind and the sun induced intoxication. 

Eastward of Cape Rowlett the land becomes increasingly abrupt and mountainous. 
Dwarfed, wind-worn forests, sparsely clothe the slopes. The naked structure of the 
land appears, rock faces broken sheer or glacier worn, vast slopes of ledge and gravel, 
stunted underbrush upon the middle heights, and plains of bog; and, on the summits, 
snow. Through gaps in that shore’s mountain wall appear the lofty peaks and the 
snow-clad southern ranges, whose ice-choked valleys spill out glaciers down the 
hollows of the slopes. 

At the head of Ainsworth Harbor there was visible to us, as we passed the entrance, 


(51) 


ViOWTALGIENEG: 









































279s 


Cpe lly 
LiF aD 


LA, 


CORKHILL ISLAND 


a glacier huge as a frozen Mississippi. The eddies and churned currents of that ice 
stream score its broad surface with the forms of a flowing torrent. It breaks off at the 
water's edge in cliffs of translucent turquoise. 

All day we sailed with a great wind astern that sometimes mounted to a gale. 
Those seas to our small boat were mountains high. They followed us as if to ovet- 
whelm us; they overtook and lifted us, and left us, foaming as they went. 

There are few harbors along that precipitous shore, and in the miles between them 
scarcely a beach or sheltered point where one could land. Accordingly, when, with 
the afternoon not far advanced and the wind still holding strong, we elected to pass 
by Ainsworth Harbor and continue up the sound, we put before us a good two hours’ 
sailing to reach the next anchorage, Parry Harbor. And that with a wind so fair and 
steady we should reach there in broad daylight we had no doubt. But wise men do 
not rely on the wind. 

Within two hours it was calm, dead glassy calm; and in the long smooth swell of 
the subsiding sea we rocked and drifted helplessly about not two miles from the head- 
land at the harbor’s mouth. So on our helplessness the day went out; the shadow of 
the far-off western mountain sides extinguishing at last the highest flaming peaks. 
And night descended chill and bleak, and then the wind. 


(52) 





VY OVA G IN G 
























































































































































































































































0 HE 


i// MU GEEZ 














— 





Y, 
Wi, 
if. 


fi 








HAYCOCK POINT 


As we turned the headland the wind beat down in violent and variable squalls. It 
was impossible to see. We drove on into that darkness, trusting to what the chart 
obscurely showed of the coast’s contour. For a few minutes we steered due south; 
then, estimating that we had come abreast of Stanley Cove, we proceeded to beat in 
short tacks straight at the abysmal midnight of the mountain side. Someone in 
speaking of this anchorage had told us of two rocks that we must pass between. With 
straining eyes we saw them straight before us. Sailing close hauled it seemed that by 
a natrow margin we could make the passage. Suddenly, with a howl of fury, the 
squall veered. We hung in stays a moment drifting onto the leeward rock. With swift 
presence of mind, the mate threw the tiller hard to windward. We slacked the sheet 
and bore away to clear the danger; we escaped that shipwreck by a fathom’s clear- 
ance. 

Somehow, aided by incessant sounding, we navigated safely that dark entrance to 
the cove, and, finding bottom at last, anchored in five fathoms of water. 

While the mate set things on board to rights, I launched the skiff, and rowed out 
into that midnight to discover and explore the shore. I skirted the rocks for perhaps 
a quarter of a mile before encountering a landing place. There on a pebble beach, I 
drew the skiff ashore, and stood at last, after a voyage of near seven thousand miles, 


(53) 


VOYAGING 


=", 





STANLEY COVE 


on grim Tierra del Fuego. I felt the stony shore under my feet, and the deep bog moss 
and the ferns that bordered it. Darkly appeared against the starlit sky the tossing 
silhouette of wind-torn trees; a mountain towered over me, immense and black. Snow 
was on the slopes not far away. It was cold, and the wind roared through the forest 
tops. 

My soul was stirred by the vast glamour of that unseen wilderness, with fear of the 
terrific forces of the darkness, with wonder at what world the night concealed, with 
ptide at the achievement of my being there, and with utter humility at my alien 
identity, diminutive, obscure, unseen in that boundless solitude beneath the stars. 

With a strong fair wind we sailed next morning for the head of Admiralty Sound. 
The day was overcast and sullen; a dark sea lashed itself to gleaming foam against 
the frowning headlands of the coast. Sheer mountain sides here form the northern 
slope; they rise in cliffs a thousand feet in height, between whose pinnacled and spired 
summits pour streams and glaciers from a loftier snow-clad hinterland. It is a heart- 
less, bleak coast; it was a tragic coast under that day’s dark threat of storm. 

The land at the head of Admiralty Sound is split by two valleys bearing easterly, 
a divided continuance of that chasm of the earth which is the sound. Between them, 
extending into the sound, to form two bays, stands Mount Hope, the western end of 


(54) 


VOYAGING 


a ten-mile rocky range that terminates where the two valleys dip and join again to 
make the bed of the great inland lake, Fognano. Mount Hope appears from the sound 
to stand alone, a dome of rock detached from all the mountains of the region. 

The southern bay lies open to the full fury of the west wind and the sea. A little 
treeless island two miles from the head, and near the shore, affords the only anchorage. 

Although the wind was strong, to save manoeuvring we jibbed to come about be- 
hind the island. And here, through my land-lubberly awkwardness in the handling 
of the congested intricacies of tiller and sheet at the cramped stern of our double- 
ender, the adventures of me nearly came to an untimely and inglorious end. The 
hurtling main-boom struck me with terrific force, hurling me backwards over the 
combing. I clutched and held to God knows what and hung, half in the water, a little 
more ashamed than scared, and far more scared than hurt. 

However, we had come about, and continuing a little further on that tack we shot 
up into the wind and anchored in the calmer water of the island's lee. 

On the shore of the bay, half a mile from where we lay, stood the buildings and 
enclosures of a sheep farm. Rowing ashore we proceeded there on foot. It was a small 
establishment, a house, a ramshackle shed or two, and the fenced corral and laby- 
rinth of the dip. The surrounding plain was hidden with the charred stumps of a 
forest that had once stood there; and it was evidence of the short-sightedness of the 
human occupants of the place that the destruction of the trees had left the buildings 
exposed to the unbroken violence of the western gales. Over the sheep-cropped grass 
about the house was strewn a litter of filth and bones and rotting carcasses. Two 
condors left their carrion gorge as we approached and on huge wings raised them- 
selves to mountain heights and soared away. 

With the cold wind whistling about us, filling our eyes with drifting sand, we 
circled round the house in vain for signs of life within. Then, balked of that hospi- 
tality and the warm cup of coffee we had promised ourselves, we set off briskly for 
the head of the bay. 

That southern valley in which we now were terminates at the sound in a broad, 
flat, sandy plain, that the pasturing of sheep has converted from a moss-grown waste 
into a close-cropped lawn of grass. A sand dune separates it from the shore and 
shelters it a little from prevailing winds. Between its nothern border and the range of 
Mount Hope flows a deep, swift stream, broadening near its outlet so as to afford a 
roomy anchorage for a boat of the tonnage of ours; and it was with a view to shifting 
the Kathleen to that berth that we went to reconnoiter it. 

It was high tide when we reached the river bank, and the sea having entered the 
lower reaches of the stream had deepened and broadened it and assimilated its cur- 
rent, so that we beheld a most inviting, almost landlocked, little harbor. 

‘Absolutely perfect !’’ we cried; and we hurried down to inspect the entrance. 

This was not so good. It narrowed abruptly when it entered the sea to a passage 


(55) 


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A CLOSER LOOK AT HAYCOCK POINT 


not more than thirty feet in width, with a cliff on one side of it and a steep sand bank 
on the other. Outside, on one hand were reefs and on the other the long curved beach 

of the bay with the sea thundering along it. To all appearances, at that hour of high 
~ tide, with the surface of the water torn by the wind, there was depth enough outside 
for a straight approach. It was worth chancing in preference to continuing at the 
wind-raked anchorage where we lay. 

On our return we found the tenant of the farm at home. And now, lest these pages 
come to glow with that too kindly spirit of undiscriminating love for man, I permit 
myself the happiness of presenting this mealy-mouthed hypocrite as the pernicious 
scoundrel that he was. 

There are all kinds of scoundrels. We have the individualists who, sinning against 
the law, get rich, or go to jail, or hang—and there’s an end of them; there are the 
democratic scoundrels who, holding that one man is as good as another, sin against 
God, whose worship is ‘‘honoring his gifts, in other men, each according to his 
genius, and loving the greatest men best: those who envy or calumniate great men 
hate God.”’ Irreverence is the greatest sin. But there remains that most inhuman sin 
of all, inhospitality. 

If Gémez had been a weak, dyspeptic, suffering creature, whose own misery had 


(56) 





VOYAGING 


poisoned the wells of kindness within him, there would have been cause enough, out 
of the hatefulness of life as he experienced it, to justify unbridled spleen against the 
world; but he was neither weak nor ill. He was a powerful and stocky fellow, brown 
skinned and bearded like a ruffian of romance. He hadn’t mean and shifty eyes, but 
rather placid ox-like orbs that looked at me unfalteringly. Gémez was at peace with 
God and with himself, we came to know; and he observed his Christian fellowship 
with all the prayerful jumping, shouting, clapping, moaning, rolling, bouncing, 
sobbing imbecility of a Holy-jumper. 

“Enter,’’ said Gomez with a grimace of hospitality, when I had presented to hima 
warm letter of introduction from his employer, Sefior Marcou, in which every atten- 
tion and courtesy was bespoken. ‘‘We would ask you to partake of a meal with us, 
but we have so little to offer,”’ and, ingratiatingly rubbing his hands, he proceeded 
to tell us that he abstained from wine and tobacco, and from the flesh of the “‘sinful’’ 
guanaco, and that he received four hundred pesos a month wages and free food and 
clothing. And all the while he talked we heard through the thin partition of the next 
room the incessant droning moaning of one praying aloud. Presently it ceased. There 
was the sound of a body bestirring itself and, with the great bulk filling the doorway, 
the prayerful one appeared. 

“My dear wife,’’ said Gémez, introducing her. 

This saintly woman's face resembled a gorilla’s; the eyes were small and close set, 
the nose was flat, and the whole skull projected toward an immense and shapeless 
orifice of mouth that opened and shut likea trap. | 

The house was untidy and unclean and almost empty. On the kitchen wall hung 
two framed Bible texts, and in the prayer-chamber bedroom was the broad, long, 
deep, soft couch of a voluptuary, laid with sheepskins, blankets, counterpanes, and 
the downy robes of sinful, wild guanacos. 

“Very bad weather,’’ said Gémez. ‘“Very bad country; very bad pasture; very bad 
year for sheep; very bad men around here. Mulach at Lago Fognano very bad man, 
always drunk.’’ (Muy mal hombre; siempre borracho!) 

We questioned him about the anchorage in the river, telling him that we intended 
moving our boat to it. He laughed and, with obscure significance, shrugged his 
shoulders, avoiding a direct reply. 

““Tomorrow,’’ he said in obedience to a command in the letter I had presented, 
*‘T take you to the lake.”’ 

Both because of the tide’s effect upon the river current and that it might favor us 
in the event of our running aground, we hoped to postpone the attempt to enter the 
river until the flood tide had set in. The day was, however, so overcast that at five 
o'clock, with darkness threatening, we hove anchor. The strong wind bore us with 
what seemed incredible speed toward the land, whose long, low shore appeared of 
unbroken extent, revealing nothing of the river’s mouth save the cliff that marked it. 


(57) 


VOYAGING 


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MACY ISLAND 


It had been high tide when we inspected the seaward approach, and the water had 
appeared to be of even and sufficient depth. Now, however, as we drew nearer to the 
land we observed breakers as far from shore as half a mile. Nevertheless, from what 
had been told us of the river, and particularly from Gémez’ having mentioned no 
dangers, it seemed reasonable to continue; so, with white seas everywhere to star- 
board of us and reefs and a converging rocky shore to port, we held on straight for 
the narrow river mouth. Suddenly the water under us showed a pallid green. The 
mate leaped forward to observe the depth: it was too late. A long sea broke across 
our bows. There was no room to turn, nor time; we struck. 

A foaming sea swept by us, grinding us along. Another followed, lifted us, and 
hurled us forward, clear. We gained new headway from the wind and shot ahead 
through a cauldron of white surf. 

We struck again, were lifted by a bigger sea, carried two fathoms on its crest-—and 
dropped so viciously that every fibre of the boat was strained. The stern swung round 
and we lay grounded, broadside to the wind and sea. 

A squall struck, throwing us on our beam ends: in the wild tumult of the sea and 
wind we lowered sail and anchored. 

We lay a quarter of a mile from shore. It was almost dark, and the falling tide soon 
left us in the very midst of breaking seas. 


(58) 





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MOUNT SEYMOUR 


It was the work of some minutes to get the spare anchor out of the hold and bolt 
its uncouth parts together. The mate in this emergency became again a miracle of 
energy and strength and prompt obedience. With the white seas curling over the 
skiff’s gunwale, he rowed the heavy anchor with its dragging weight of chain to 
windward, and at the chain’s length dropped it. Then, taking advantage of every lift 
of the larger seas, we strained to draw the bow into the wind. Time and again with- 
out avail we pulled the anchor through the yielding sandy bottom, hove it aboard, 
replaced it in the skiff, and the mate carried it to sea again. The bow stuck fast. 
Finally, after an hour of exhausting labor, we worked the boat’s stern into the wind 
and, with both anchors at their chain’s and cable’s lengths to windward, held her 
so, and went below to await the tide or dissolution. 

Battening the companionway doors against the wind and the heavy seas that now 
and then boarded the stern, we rekindled the fire, that had burned out during our 
preoccupation, and settled down grimly to enjoy what dismal comfort was to be had. 

Being, because of his youth and his wide experience of calamity, the more hopeful 
of us two, the mate was in this hour of misfortune the more dejected. The emotions 
trace a circle, with their cause as center and the radius the measure of disaster. While 
he sat overwhelmed by thought of the damage that our ship must suffer, I, with less 
hope, had already seen her thrown upon the shore, a total wreck. I had accepted this 


(59) 


VOY A GANG 


as an inevitable and therefore a finished episode. I had seen us stranded there—with- 
out a boat, to be sure, but quite alive and well. I had planned what we should save 
and, all in one moment of imagination, visioned our triumphant passage of the 
mountains southward. Out of the very all-eliminating completeness of disaster rose 
the sun upon a clean, new world. I laughed to see the mate so haggard and dispirited. 

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!’ I declaimed in tragically moving 
tones. And when, with lowered voice and the slow rhythm of the pendulum of des- 
tiny, I spoke these lines: 


‘*He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.’ 


the deep and bitter cup of the mate’s misery bubbled over; he laughed. Nature, for 
both of us, had overdone its drama. 

I remember years ago, when my older children were very little and we were all 
living in a tiny, one-room, abandoned schoolhouse in the Middle West, that they 
heard there, for the first time, thunder: and it was thunder so terrific that it seemed 
like a concussion of the universe about the little shell that held us. And the children 
were frightened. So we gave them each a tin pan and a heavy kitchen spoon. 

‘Take these,’’ we said, ‘‘and when it thunders beat as hard as you can on the pans 
and see if you can make a bigger noise than the thunder. It’s a game.” 

They did make a bigger noise, and loved it; and therewith ended forever the terrors 
of thunder. 

No sound of nature could be more gruesomely harassing than that intermittent 
grinding, gnashing, thumping, creaking, groaning of our forlorn ship as she rolled 
and pounded in that sea. So I got out my beautiful, beloved silver flute and played 
upon it; and if {t had never before imposed a mood of peace upon one human spirit— 
and that is possible—that day, by the incongruousness of its plaintive notes amid 
those sounds of wreck, it did. 

Then, lo! as if the forces of destruction had grown discouraged in the face of our 
impressive nonchalance, the tides of the sea and of fortune turned to favor us. In- 
stead of lifting on the crests of waves we floated free, and only pounded in the 
hollows. 

With new energy and strength we went to work to improve our position, and in 
an hour’s time, by pulling the vessel out to the anchors and carrying the anchors 
alternately out to sea, we reached a safe depth to lie in. It was an extremely rough and 
uncomfortable berth, but in the total darkness of that night it was out of the question 
to hoist canvas and look for another. Utterly exhausted, we turned in. 


(60) 








CHAPTER Ix 


FLAMES AND DESTRUCTION 


FTER a restless night we were about at dawn, to find that the wind and sea 

had moderated. It was again low tide and the calmer water revealed to 

us the devious course of the true channel. It was decided that while I 

kept the appointment with Gémez to go with him to Lago Fognano, 

the mate should take the boat up the river and anchor her there, and proceed alone 
on the following day to join me at the lake. : 

Gémez appeared at six o'clock riding along the shore and leading another horse. 
“Splendid!’’ I thought, “‘here’s where I ride.’’ But the horse carried a pack saddle, 
which the owner showed no inclination to remove. And after a most friendly, smiling 
greeting, my guide started up the valley at a brisk pace that kept me jogging at the 
horse's tail. 

There can be little conversation between men who have scarcely ten words in 
common. However, out of my feelings over the near disaster of the night before I 
managed to tell Gomez that he might have instructed us about the passage. 

“Yes, it is very bad,”’ he said, and laughed maliciously. ‘‘You have no gun!’’ he 
remarked presently, in astonishment that I was weaponless. ‘‘Must have gun. Very 
- bad men around here; and wild cattle, very bad.’’ He carried a Winchester slung over 
his shoulder and the customary large heavy knife on his hip. 

The trail followed the south bank of the river. After crossing the broad green 
pasture plain we began the ascent of the valley. The ground was uneven and difficult. 
Small streams and tracts of bog obstructed us and finally forced my guide to dismount. 
The horses became an encumbrance and floundered miserably, at times getting mired 
to their bellies. You hardly walk, you flounder in the bog. Its substance is like satu- 


(6r) 


VOYAGING 


tated sponge, it swallows up your steps, it wearies you and wets you through. Still 
we made good time. 

Before three hours we had mounted several hundred feet, and, turning, saw the 
sound behind us like a map, with little foam-encircled islands on its surface and 
the white waves showing like tiny flowers in a dark blue meadow. And under the 
enchantment of that distance and the clear beauty of the day the memory of the near- 
to terrors of the sea appeared illusion. No wonder that in the far-off sight of God 
nothing should matter. 

Presently, on reaching dry soil and the shelter of a grove of trees, we stopped for 
rest. We warmed ourselves beside a fire and ate a refreshment of chocolate that I had 
brought. Then, leaving the horses, we proceeded through the woods. 

Through occasional openings in the forest the lake was now revealed below us. 
That spurred us on; and the dry soil and the smooth creature-trodden paths made our 
swift pace a pleasure. 

Suddenly a shot sounded from the lake, and across a sunlit clearing just in front 
of us passed a flash of white and gold, and the swift rush of moving bodies. We 
reached the open space. There paused a moment and then leaped away a herd of the 
most graceful deerlike creatures, gleaming white and cream, so beautiful: guanacos. 
They arched their swanlike necks and leapt the fallen trunks and bounded toward 
the mountain side. One stopped and turned with timid curiosity and looked at us; 
and then took sudden fright, and he was gone. 

And in that spot, where there had been the beauty of those living things, was but 
the dull wilderness again, with hoarse men’s voices sounding from the lake, and 
Gomez firing futilely at the deserted mountain side. Hidden among the mountains of 
Tierra del Fuego, sheltered by their barriers against the cold winds of the south and 
kept inviolate against the devastations of human enterprise, lies Lake Fognano: 
scarcely a hundred men can ever have beheld it. 

I stood upon a little grassy knoll, and from my feet far eastward stretched the 
lake, unbroken to its own horizon: Boers that line the peaks of mountains sixty 
miles away marked its far end. It was midday and the warm sun shone on us from 
the cloudless north. Calm and silent was that hour but for the faintest far-off roaring 
of the west wind in the forests of the mountain sides. Waves of silver swept over the 
gtass lands; silver and gold were the wild marshes and the glistening shore, blue was 
the lake and tender green the budding forest tops; and the high mountain peaks stood 
dazzling white against the profound deeps of space. There are moments in the experi- 
ence of beauty whose ecstasy transcends all memory or vision of happiness, so that 
their unrelated present stands complete as an immeasurable stellar lifetime. 

A shout shattered the silence. Turning, I saw a big fellow, armed with a rifle and 
belted about with cartridges, striding toward me. 

‘“Where are they? Where'd they go?’’ he yelled. ‘‘God, look!’”’ 


(62) 


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And dropping on one knee he took careful aim at a point high up the mountain 
side, and fired. Making their way across an open knoll were three or four guanacos. 

The hunter fired to his feverish heart’s content; then, shouting that he’d struck 
One, went tearing up the mountain side. There was a shouting of men, a firing of guns, 
a barking of dogs, the bedlam of a hunter’s carnival—fainter and farther off, till men 
and dogs were lost to sight and hearing in the tangled ravines of the wild slopes. And 
as at last after a long time they struggled back again, there could be seen high up the 
mountain, close to the lower patches of the snow that crowned it, the same guanacos 
daintily on their upward way, all unconcerned. And so, the great hunt being over, 
the hunter came and greeted me and shook my hand. 

He was a big, hearty, red-faced boisterous fellow, this German, Mulach, generous 
and kind; and his joy at meeting with a stranger who would be his guest was like a 
child’s in its impulsiveness. One cannot know the friendliness and warmth of human 
beings but through the privilege of an encounter in the wilderness. So, parting from 
my saintly guide, I set out with the excommunicated Mulach and his Chilean gaucho, 
Juan, for the German’s farm across the lake, the Estancia Isabel. 

(63 ) 


VOYAGING 


We embarked in a crazy flat-bottomed rowboat, on which, a good breeze having 
sprung up, we rigged a square sail of a patch of canvas. An hout’s sailing brought us 
to the northern shore a few miles up the lake. Here in a little creek we beached the 
boat and started for the house that stood half hidden by a grove of trees. A pretty, 
red-cheeked, blue-eyed, sweet-voiced little boy came running gleefully to meet his 
father. The wife stood on the threshold and greeted us with eager joy; and with the 
spirit of a real homecoming we stamped into the warm kitchen. In almost no time 
we are feasting our hungry bellies on delicious currant bread and tea. 

“This,’’ says our host, mumbling through a mouthful, ‘‘is free and easy place. 
Make yourself at home and stay as long as you can.”’ 

And there we did stay, held for days and weeks by circumstance, until the very 
acceptance of our host’s kindness and of the care-free ease and comfort of the daily 
life they offered us became a reproach to us. 

The Estancia Isabel is, with the exception of the Silecian and Indian settlements at 
_ the extreme eastern end, the only inhabited spot on Lake Fognano. It occupies an 
extent of about ten miles of the comparatively flat meadow and timberland that 
borders the northwestern end of the lake; but the little enterprise had encountered 
natural obstacles so incommensurable with the limited capital and pioneering genius 
behind it that it appeared scarcely to have scarred the pristine order of the region. 

The main building of the farm was the dwelling house, a barracklike structure 
built of pit-sawn boards, comprising four rooms that opened onto a covered veranda. 
There were, besides, a pigsty, a henhouse, a ramshackle shed or two, a corral, a 
sheep dip. There were a stump-cluttered, carcass-littered, sodden barnyard, a fenced 
garden, a surrounding tract of half-burnt forest with huge surviving trees towering 
over a wilderness of fallen trunks and branches. There were the miles of fenced-in 
‘camp,’ of woods and bog with only here and there a bit of clear dry pasture land, 
and beyond this ‘‘camp’’ the untrodden forests of the mountain side. 

On the Estancia Isabel lived Mulach and his wife and child, and two Chilefios. 
There were three pigs, a few hens, six horses and as many head of cattle. It was spring 
and the German had but recently arrived to supersede a Chilean manager. 

But in what Mulach had already undertaken or accomplished appeared that genius 
for pioneering which has made the German residents of Chile the most potent force 
in the country’s development. His was a nature to be kindled into a frenzy of activity 
by the very chaos of disorder into which he had fallen; and the profusion of the un- 
claimed resources of that wilderness stimulated his vision of accomplishment and 
roused him to destructive energy against the obstacles of nature that thwarted it. He 
saw in that wild forest land broad cultivated fields, which in the sun-warmed, shel- 
tered valley of the lake would yield rich crops of grain. He saw fat sheep and cattle 
browsing on its fertile pastures. He saw the mountain streams converted into power, 
the forest into lumber, the lumber into barns and houses. He saw the region Pope 


(64) 





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MOUNTAIN AT FOOT OF FOGNANO 


and prospering with folk whose freedom was the flower of their isolation there. 

And he was not only a dreamer. He plunged into the work of destruction with a 
madman’s frenzy, ripping, tearing, hacking at the jungle, piling high the brush and 
burning it, till out of the chaos that destruction first achieved emerged the order of 
man’s cultivation. 

One day at evening twilight he kindled a great accumulation of rubbish that lay on 
the border of the forest near the farmyard clearing. A strong wind was blowing; 
within ten minutes a full acre was ablaze. The fire leapt the tallest growing trees, 
and these flamed to the sky like burning oil tanks. The whole region of the ancient 
forest encumbered with fallen trunks and inflammable brush, and dry bogs and mea- 
dows of long grass, lay in the fire’s path as fuel for its flames; the stock, the sheep, 
the bridge, the pasture fences, everything above the ground to no one knew what 
limits to the east was threatened with destruction. The sense of imminent disaster, 
the furnace heat, the roaring of the flames and their lurid glare in the oncoming dark- 
ness, struck terror in us. The German rushed about in wild excitement, a demon figure 
against the flames. 

“Tt’s going, isn’t it? The whole damned thing!’’ he shouted. 

Together we circled through the forest. Only the flames now lit the darkness there, 
throwing their lurid light far down the gloomy aisles. Small fires were starting all 
about us. 

(65) 


VOYAGING 


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‘‘Nothing to be done,’’ said the German hopelessly; and suddenly, right there in 
the fire’s track, in heat almost too great to bear, he began, with sentiment that is only 
German, gathering sprays of the orange-flowered califata bush for a bouquet— 
‘‘before they burn,’ he said. 

The fate of the farm and the wilderness having passed into the control of destiny, 
we went to supper and ate with almost unconcern. 

The flames raged fiercely for three hours. They swept through the dry rubbish of 
the nearest clearings, destroyed some lengths of timber fence, penetrated a distance 
into the living forest; and then in struggle with the dampness there miraculously 
died. 

It had been arranged that the mate should meet me at the lake on the day follow- 
ing my coming there, and signal his arrival across the water by kindling the dry 
grass on the promontory. Accordingly, to combine a morning of sport with the chore 
of ferrying, I embarked after breakfast with Mulach and Juan and crossed the lake to 
an extensive plain that lay on the southern shore a few miles below our point of 
rendezvous. The plain appeared to Mulach not only a likely place for guanacos but 
promising land for the extension of the farm pasturage. 

The day was fair, and the inevitable west wind was at that hour too light to im- 


(66) 





pe Os AG IN G 


pede our progress with the oars. While still far distant from the spot for which we 
headed, guanacos were to be discerned on the wild meadows bordering the shore; 
and as we neared the land several came down onto the sandy beach and watched us 
curiously. Our close approach at last alarmed them all but one whose eager interest 
kept him lingering, until, at the grounding of the boat, he took sudden fright and 
like a flash leaped into the covert and vanished. The hunters followed after him, 
and for an hour I was left alone. 

I wandered out upon a point of firm dry land that lay between the lake and an 
extensive marsh. Here was a true wilderness—untouched by man, and yet so beauti- 
fully cleared beneath its grove of slender trees, with lawns of short-cropped grass and 
smooth-trodden paths, that it was like a park. It was sheltered there and warm, 
and so quiet that you heard the lapping of the wavelets on the beach. But the wild 
animals whose place it was had fled—and one was sadly conscious of intrusion. 

Meanwhile the hunt went on, and my Franciscan reverie was punctuated by the 
sound of shots that marked the hunter’s progress. The Chilefio presently returned 
with the proud air of a conqueror to conduct me to an animal that he had bagged. 

Our path lay through a forest of lofty southern evergreen—the coigue, and the so- 
called oak, or roblé. It was a vaulted dense-roofed forest, dark and cool within, clean 
floored and dry and softly carpeted with grass and moss; and, leading everywhere and 
nowhere were the smooth guanacos’ paths. It was the Paradise of the guanacos; and 
the gentle creatures by centuries of unmolested living there had impressed upon the 
wilderness the tranquillity of their own natures. 

We came to a broad, swift-flowing, sunlight-flooded river where the brown pebbles 
glistened like precious stones through the limpid water, and the califata drooped its 
flowering branches in the stream. 

“There!’’ said the Chilefio. 

In the shoal water against the far bank of the stream crouched a wounded guanaco. 
It held its long neck erect and looked at us, quietly. The Chilefio threw a stone that 
thumped its ribs. It struggled desperately to climb the bank, sank back, and then 
again looked at us quietly. I told the fellow to shoot it. The bullet struck behind the 
ear. The guanaco leaped again, fell back. The long, swanlike neck slowly arched 
toward the stream. The mouth, touching the water, tried to drink. The arched neck 
dropped—and a great flood of crimson blood flowed from the mouth and dyed the 
river red. 

The German appeared, having shot another two miles up the stream; and for hours 
the wilderness was rent with shouting and splashing and plunging and crashing as 
we wotked to navigate the carcasses through the shoals and rapids and snaring ob- 
structions of the current of the lake. And as we left the dry meadows we fired them 
behind us, till the smoke of huge conflagration hung over everything; so that our 
retreat with flames and corpses partook of the glory of a military progress. 


(67) 


VOYVAGUNIG 


At the lake the bedraggled carcasses were pulled ashore; and, with the flushed 
heroes posing over them against the tranquil distant mountains and the sky, I photo- 
graphed that sportsman’s tableau. 

But hours of daylight still remained and, although no smoke of the mate’s signal 
fire had met our watchfulness, we loaded the guanacos into the boat and began labo- 
riously to row down the lake toward the place of rendezvous. The boat was heavy 
laden and the wind was strong, and it was near sundown when, in the lee of the 
appointed promontory, we went ashore to rest. 

We sat ona sheltered spur of the hillside with the warm sun shining on our packs. 
Below us in the shadow of the hill was the smooth crescent beach with our boat 
drawn up on it. The mountains were golden under the westering sun and on the blue 
lake now lay the peacefulness of evening. For a long time we sat there without speak- 
ing, for the spell of that infinite serenity was over us: and I repeated quietly to 
Mulach the sonnet which is the breath of that same cosmic peacefulness that there 
embraced us. 

‘* Returning home at evening, with an ear 
Catching the notes of Philomel—an eye 
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career, 
He mourns that day so soon has glided by: 
E’en like the passage of an angel's tear 
That falls through the clear ether silently.”’ 


Suddenly there sounded a breaking twig in the thicket near us. Both men sprang 
for their guns and followed it. A moment passed, and then two shots were fired 
almost simultaneously. There were shouts and a crashing of the underbrush. The 
hideous thing was irresistible, and, cursing them, I followed. 

Down at the bottom of a dark depression in a dense and beautiful canelo grove, 
among the moss-grown roots and fallen trunks, was the Chilefio astride the fallen 
but still living guanaco. With the man’s arms tight around its neck it struggled 
frantically to rise. They tied a lasso to one of its hind legs, and the animal, freed of 
the man’s weight, got upon its feet and leaped—and fell again. 

A foreleg had been shattered by the bullet. Again it struggled and plunged head- 
long with wild attempts at freedom, and would have gained it but that the lasso ; 
pulled it back. Thus, desperately floundering, they drove it toward the shore and to 
the very boat itself. Out in the clear, cool daylight on the beach it fell exhausted. 
Holding its long neck erect, it looked furtively about with dark, round eyes that still 
seemed unalarmed. 

The Chilefio straddled it; and while with mock tenderness he took its head caress- 
ingly against his cheek, he carefully placed his knife point at the base of the throat 
and drove it home. Out of the belly they took a baby one, well grown. 


(68) 











a Ree AG ENG 

Sa 

| dumped the two animals into the boat, set fire to the grass of the hillside and 
een canelo grove, seated ourselves as best we could on top of the warm car- 
nd, with the boat loaded to the gunwale, rowed cautiously away. 

ilight descended as we crossed. But long after the mountain bases and the low- 


were in shadow the smoke of burning meadows and forests mounted up into 


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CHAPTER X 


THE MATE’S ADVENTURE 


HE day following the hunt, hoping to rest my land-weary sea legs, I 

hobbled off into the concealment of the woods to escape my host's relent- 

less energy and persecuting kindness—only at last to be sought out and 

dragged on wearying excursions over the trackless bog and tangled jungle 
of the camp. We watched all day in vain for the smoke of the mate’s signal fire, and 
with evening came anxiety as to what had befallen him. 

The following morning, as early as the slothful habits of the Chilefios would per- 
mit, I set out on horseback with Juan, decidedly the more agreeable of the tempera- 
mental pair, to find fresh horses on the range in order that we might the next day 
tide down to the port. The horse and cattle range is the unfenced wilderness, and a 
round-up may be the work of an hour or a day or a week, as luck shall determine. 

Our way first lay along the shore. It was a blue day and a windy one. The surf 
broke on the shingle and its icy spray flew over us and wet and chilled us to the 

‘marrow. We crossed the border line of Chile and rode far into Argentina, watching 
continually for fresh horse tracks. 

Found at last, they led us through wild wastes of bog and marsh, in which our 
horses floundered to the belly; and they led through bramble thickets and through 
dense and tangled copses of stunted trees; they traversed tracts of noble forest follow- 
ing the smooth paths of the guanaco. Deep in the forest in a verdant glade we found 


(70) 





VOYAGING 


the horses. Juan with the lasso secured three. We led them to the lake; there, driving 
them before us, we galloped madly home. 

It was fiveo’clock. Mrs. Mulach, a plain little Englishwoman, indefatigably active, 
neat, irritable, kind and generous, was preparing supper. The rapid clatter of her little 
steps sounded on the wooden floor as she raced about the narrow circuit of her destiny 
—the stove, the table, the meat block and the flour bin. 

The familiar steam of the eternal mutton soup was wafted on the air. 

“Supper !’” roared Mulach, coming to the door. 

The port of Estancia Isabel is the northern of the two bays at the head of Admiralty 
Sound, and is known as Jackson Bay. A rough trail had been laid out through the 
valley north of the Mount Hope range, and over those twelve difficult miles passed 
all the estancia’s traffic with the outside world. With Juan as my guide, I set out on 
the following morning for the port, leading a spare horse for the mate. The track was 
extremely rough, and the occasional bridges of corduroy were either in such poor 
repair or so isolated in the churned bog of their approach that they had rather to be 
avoided than made use of. In traversing bog it is the judgment of the horse that is 
most to be relied upon. The little native animals have a real instinct for safe footing, 
and will often stop and refuse to venture upon perilous spots that to the human eye 
appear quite dry and firm. And in the forest they have equal assurance; threading 
their way however swiftly through the mazes of young-growth timber they never 
misjudge what they can leap or pass beneath or through; while at the same time, by 
their utter disregard of the rider’s proportions, they threaten him with the fate of 
Absalom. 

We got no glimpse of the port nor of Admiralty Sound until we had covered three- 
quarters of the distance. For some miles the trail had crept up the mountain side, 
leaving the valley gradually below it on the right. 

A steep hill confronted us with its edge cut sharp against the sky as if beyond it 
there were nothing. The trail led over it. With the suddenness of our arrival on the 
summit, wild as the biting wind that greeted us, the whole vast marvel of the sound 
displayed itself. 

The day was clouded, and the wind-swept water gleamed like fluid metal between 
the far-receding, iron-dark mountain walls that enclosed it; and against the lurid 
brightness of the west stood the steel-blue peaks of Dawson Island. 

At a reckless trot we descended the steep, stony trail to the plain of the port. On 
that arid, treeless flat the wind blew with new violence accumulated from the flank- 
ing mountain sides. Scarcely above the reach of the tide on the smooth sand beach of 
the bay stood a rough cabin that served as a lodging for the men of the Estancia Isabel 
on their occasional visits to the port; so weathered was it by the wind-blown spray 
and drifting sand that it seemed a part of that cast-up mess of refuse from the sea in 
which it stood. 

(72) 


VOYAGING 





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tea ern $ —— —__ 


ADMIRALTY SOUND FROM THE HEAD 


In the tangled meadow a short stone’s throw from the cabin stood a wooden cross 
that marked the grave of one whom the dreary solitude of the place had driven to 
suicide. Along the beach and seaward over the broad shoals of the bay thundered. 
everlastingly the surf, adding the sound of desolation to that picture of it. 

After a refreshment of hot coffee and bread, we set out upon the long, slow climb 
around the face of Mount Hope, to arrive at the southern bay. Following a precipi- 
tous ascent up wooded steeps, we attained the relatively level plain of a spur of the 
mountain. Here again, between broad ledges of rock, was bog, and the dwarfed trees 
that almost lay upon the ground were evidence of the prevailing violence of the west- 
ern winds that raked it. 

Since the day following my arrival at the lake I had struggled with an anxiety 
about the safety of the Karhleen that only my enforced powerlessness to act had 
kept in philosophical control. Now, however, as every height we reached and every 
promontory that we turned held out the hope of a view of the other bay and a dis- 
closure of what disaster to my boat had kept the mate from joining me, I became a 
helpless prey to the worst anxieties, and steeled myself to bear the reality of that 
picture of a wreck-strewn shore which my imagination formed. As successive points 
of promise were reached and passed only to confront us with new barriers, our eager 


(72) 


et ee iy es eS ee 





VOYAGING 


pace was quickened to the limit of my endurance. I tired; fatigue and repeated dis- 
appointments let my dark forebodings fix themselves upon me with the strength of 
certainty. 

Then, suddenly, around the shoulder of a headland that our path encircled, ap- 
peared the bay! Not all of it. First came to view the far-off southern end of the long 
shore; smooth, clean, unblemished sand it was, and the dark sea was breaking in long 
rollers on it. As we advanced the even drama of that strand deployed itself with the 
serene, sustained and cumulative tension of great art. And as its curve swept toward 
us the enlarging volume of the roar of breakers mounted to our ears. 

Then from that shore and from a hundred reefs and islands sheer below us the full 
thunder of the sea expanded. Our eyes took in the scene. There lay the bay with not 
a mark upon its long, clear beach; there was the river’s mouth with the clear current 
flowing unobstructed through; and there, in the sheltered basin that the broadening 
river made behind the dunes, rode the tiny Kathleen, safe at anchor. And no eyes ever 
met a sight more grateful. 

How we raced down the intervening half mile to the boat and riotously hailed the 
mate to ferry us aboard is needless to be told. Seated, presently, in the warm cabin 
over tea, he related his adventures. 

At high tide of the day that I departed for the lake he weighed anchor and, with- 
out taking the anchor on board, sailed around into the channel of the river and gained 
its mouth. Here he encountered a strong current, but with a fair wind he passed 
slowly and safely through. He anchored in the lagoon some distance below the 
bridge. 3 

The following morning, just at daybreak, he was awakened by the grounding of 
the boat. It proved that the strong river current had dragged the anchor through the 
yielding pebble bottom. He shifted it to a sandy point downstream, burying it three 
feet in the sand, and secured two stern lines to the bridge. Nevertheless, the river 
cutrent was of such strength, and subject to such uncertain variations by the influence 
of the tide, that he postponed starting for the lake until another day. 

The second day, however, ushered in the wind as a new force to harass the boat at 
her unstable anchorage. But in spite of violent squalls the anchor held, and the day 
passed without untoward happening. The mate was uneasy and lay down that night 
without undressing. The wind increased to a gale. At one o'clock the flood tide in- 
vaded the river to where the Kathleen lay, and dissipating the opposing force of the 
current, gave the boat into the power of the wind. The anchor that lay to the wind- 
ward was torn free: with the crash of the boat against the bridge the mate awoke. 

From that hour, until at four ebb tide relieved him, the mate sat braced upon the 
bridge and kept the boat away; and the measure of his strength and endurance is to 
be found in that he succeeded where the anchor failed. 

Trouble of this sort was, however, at an end. The Kathleen’s bow was held down- 


(73) 


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BRIDGE ACROSS AZAPARDO RIVER 
stream by two anchors locked into the roots of trees, and the stern moored to the 
bridge. 

Juan returned that evening to the port. Next morning, laden with such quantity of 
table luxuries as we could carry (Mrs. Mulach ‘“‘loved pickles’’), we joined him 
there, and pursued an uneventful journey homeward to the farm. 

Mulach’s welcome was the heartiest; and, as if in celebration of our return, he 
kindled a towering brush heap. We sat around it in the darkness and watched the 
sparks mount up and mingle with the stars. It was so utterly and beautifully peaceful 
in that place that there crept over me a sense of the profound familiarity of the envi- 
ronment, as if it were and ever had been home. And then I felt the marvel of that 
mood’s annihilation of the facts of seven thousand intervening miles and months of 
journeying, by which those facts of time and space became illusion, and the spirit’s 
vision revealed itself as the truth. 

Under the spell of those hot dragon-tongues of flame that lapped the night we 
might have lain for hours watching the fire as a symbol of the mind consume the 


(74) 








VOYAGING 


heaped-up roots and trunks of the material world, and at last through the very 
ecstasy of peace have beheld within ourselves an unfolding of the deeper beauties of 
the spirit’s universe. That was not to be. Mulach’s wild energy kept him impervious 
to dreams. He sprang about tearing up roots; and, like a demon, he forever piled more 
trash upon the flames. 

Mulach’s relentlessness had almost worn me out, and yet the great test of our 
endurance was before us. For days he had talked of an expedition—to which, for 
the huge importance that was attached to it and the verbal preparation that was 
made, I shall devote a chapter. 


(75) 





THE GREAT EXPEDITION 


E were to find a passage through the lofty mountain ranges that lay 

to the north of the Estancia Isabel, out to the settled region that 

from there stretched northward to the Strait, and eastward to the 

Rio Grande. It was important, for many reasons, that a track of 
communication be established here. And it seemed to Mulach opportune and to us 
attractive—albeit a little terrifying because of that tireless energy of our guide—to 
go upon this expedition while we were there. 

Almost with dawn of that momentous day Willie and I arose and dressed. We 
waited hours before the household stirred. With breakfast over we began to pack. 
The expedition was to go afoot and take a horse to carry the supplies. We were to 
spend one night at least. 

‘‘What shall I take2’’ I asked our chief. 

‘‘Nothing! We'll show you how to do it here. A great big fire; lie down in front 
of it. Don’t need a thing. Blankets? No: don’t need ‘em. A tent? No: don’t bring 
yours. I have a big one. Room enough for all of us if it rains.” 

I had a number of simple camp conveniences that I timidly suggested taking, but 
was told we couldn’t bother with such stuff. However, a kettle of mine was accepted 
and into this I smuggled some evaporated soup and a nest of four drinking cups instead 
of one, which Mulach had said would be enough for four people. Willie and I ex- 
changed looks and let things take their course. Somehow, when the horse stood — 
ready for the march it carried a great number of bales and rolls. 

We started. Out past the last bounds of the farm into the untrodden forest we went, 
climbing an easy ascent toward the mountain divide that we had chosen to penetrate. 


(76) 





VOYAGING 


I, with my compass, led the party, choosing the path and clearing it a little of dead 
stuff. Mulach and Juan came next, Juan with a machete and Mulach with a meat 
cleaver. They blazed and hacked and cleared the path of the obstructing saplings for 
Willie and the horse, who followed last. It was my good fortune over a part of our 
way to find a smooth guanaco trail, which I so much improved by throwing out dead 
limbs and branches that the others, impressed and astonished by its width and beauty, 
with one accord named the trail Camino Kent—by which name, whatever posterity 
may choose to call it, it shall always live in my memory. 

But the forest was dry and open and, despite the extensive cutting and blazing of 
our pioneers, we made good progress, and found ourselves by early afternoon high 
On one mountain side within the pass itself, and the other mountain side in view 
across the gorge of a stream. We stopped for a meal. Juan left on a fruitless search for 
guanacos, while Mulach roasted mutton on a wooden spit, and I made tea. 

From here on our path became more difficult. The mountain side was steep and 
thickly grown with small trees. We soon came to patches of snow that the horse 
found difficulty in crossing. As we advanced the patches became fields of snow, waist 
deep in spots, and dwarfed trees, bent and twisted by the wind, grew like entangle- 
ments across our path. Below us ran the torrent between steep, thickly wooded banks, 
and above us, not three hundred yards away, the timber line offered a trail more steep, 
undoubtedly, but free at least of trees. 

I went ahead to try it there, climbing through such a densely matted growth of 
dwarfed trees, crawling in their tops, plunging into drifts about their roots and 
stems, that I wondered if the horse could ever be brought to follow; yet he was. We 
reached the timber line and tracked through mountain moss and low bushes, occa- 
sionally crossing slides of slaty stone or, in the depressions, drifts of snow. The 
mountain sides rose steeply over us with jagged snow-patched peaks against the 
zenith sky; and far below us over the green forest tops of the valley lay the blue lake, 
and, still beyond, the snow-capped mountain barrier whose southern slope descended 
to the sea. 

We reached an eminence from which appeared the full extent of the pass we were 
attempting. It was quite closed by a mountain as lofty as those on either side of us, 
presenting only the possibility of a winding passage to the eastward. The valley of 
our stream terminated in a grassy flat enclosed by hills. It was winter. The cold blue 
shadows of late afternoon had settled over the scene but for where the low sun shot 
brilliant shafts of light between the peaks and lit the high rim of our pass. 

We led the horse down the shaly incline, across a deep snow field out onto the 
river meadow and there left him to graze. Willie, free of his charge, rushed on ahead; 
and, as Mulach and I toiled over the snow to that side at which a passage might be 
found we saw him, a tiny black figure on the vast expanse of snow, mounting up to 
where the steep mountain faces closed the path. 


(77) 


Ve ORY aeGrle Ns 


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NEAR THE TIMBER LINE 


Somehow, thanks to the hard training of the past few days and to the stimulating, 
thrilling splendour of the mountain country we had reached, I felt as strong and fresh 
as if the day were just beginning. There’s a distracting joy in new discovery, fed by 
the faith one has that every height ascended will reveal a wonderland. 

And so I said to Mulach, ‘We'll go on! We'll send Juan back home with the horse, 
and then see if there isn’t a way through here.’ aie 

But Mulach, strangely, wouldn't. 

‘Give me the gun,’’ I urged, “‘or what's left of the mutton. Nothing more. The 
mate and I will find your pass. And we’ll go clear around and come back by some 
other way!”’ 

‘‘No, no,’’ he repeated stubbornly, “‘we must all stick together.”’ 

Still, we climbed to the highest point of the pass itself, a rounded field of snow of 
unknown depth. And from that top we looked into an immense ravine, another 
valley, leading southward back to the lake again, and northward into mountains 
where its course was hid from view. This valley was enclosed between immense, 
steep mountain sides of unbroken form that, clothed in sombre forest, descended to 
their very mecting in the darkness of a narrow gorge. Northward, around a moun- 
tain spur the golden evening light streamed into it and somehow gave the promise of 
green plains and pastures with the glint of distant settlements. 


(78) 





ee a es eS ee 





MOP AVG. NG 


“Come on,’’ I cried, for Mulach was lagging, ‘‘we’ll travel until dark and find the 
valley.” 

For a moment I won him. Together we started down the snowy slope. We sank in 
to our knees. A hundred yards or so we went—then Mulach stopped. 

“No, we'll go back,”’ he snapped. 

Then like a flash of light it came to me that he was tired! If I’d been almost dead 
I'd not have told him so, it was so sweet to have revenge for those hot, miserable 
miles he’d dragged me through the marsh and bog and river bed to get his dead 
guanaco. I followed his retreating homeward steps exuberantly urging him to climb 
the slopes. He only was more set on getting home again—or back to camp. He’d take 
the horse, he said, and travel down a way to where we'd had our lunch and there 
prepare things for the night. So, for a while, we parted, and I ascended the ridge of 
the mountain that lay between the two valleys. I was on its northern slope where it 
was free of snow. Rich, green and russet moss and heather grew where the slides of 
shale had not covered or swept away the soil. It was not a difficult climb, except a 
few feet of steep, sharp-edged rock that had to be scaled in order to reach the summit 
of the ridge itself. Once there, on what had seemed, as I climbed up, to be the high- 
est peak of the mountain, I was confronted by a succession of similar knobs of the 
same elevation or higher; but the hour was too late to continue. 

The sun shone from over the westward range and it was warm. I sat down in a soft 
bed of moss, lighted my pipe, and, breathing deep contentment, surveyed the scene. Far 
off lay the great blue lake with the west wind trailing purple cloud shadows like veils 
across it; lay the thick forested slopes and level lands—light green with budding 
foliage and flooded with the sunshine of late afternoon. And above the summer land- 
scape of the valley, thirty miles away in the blue haze of the south, stood the serrated 
peaks of the Darwin mountains in eternal winter. Straight down below me I saw 
the mate and Mulach and the horse, three tiny figures threading their way down 
the valley of the stream; and I saw Juan, alone, climbing the snow slope toward the 
northwest. 

The colors of the rocks and minute vegetation of my peak resembled in depth and 
brilliance the bottom of a rocky tide-pool by the sea; and the texture of the mosses 
was as rich and varied as ecclesiastical embroidery. 

Sitting there in lofty solitude, it occurred to me that I was the first man ever to have 
scaled that peak. And, since the mountain, being of no particular importance or 
prominence, had never been named, I christened it, for reasons of most tender senti- 
ment, Mount Barbara. 

But it was getting late—and cold, and all my companions were long gone out of 
sight. I hurried down the mountain side, sliding down the slopes of shale, running 
and jumping into moss beds, coasting down toboggan slides of snow. Jubilantly 
I marched along the river valley singing ‘‘John Brown’s Body.”’ 


(79) 


V OYA GING 


Dusk had descended as I entered the forest and here it soon deepened to a light-and- 
shadowless obscurity. ‘‘It will be nice,’’ it kept occurring to me, “‘to arrive at the 
camp they have made, to rest and dry myself before the great log fire. Maybe the 
supper is cooked. By God! that will taste fine!’’ And with appetite as a spur I broke 
into a run. 

I reached the appointed place and it was deserted, nor were there any tracks to 
show they had passed that way. I pursued my course, holloing as I went, but getting 
no response. 

The twilight in those latitudes is long. I could see to travel and I raised my pace 


against the threat of darkness. I shouted—and the echo of my own voice answered. 


A mile more and I had almost reached the limit of my patience, and in disgust and 
fury planned to settle for the night, alone. It was then that, far away, I heard an 
answering call. 3 

In the thickest of the woods, a great distance from the proper trail, I came upon 
them, the mate with the horse, and Mulach; not camped, nor even waiting, but there 
in the darkness plunging on blindly through the wilderness, with the German like 
a madman hacking with his cleaver, climbing, running, falling, staggering on, and 
the poor horse plunging in that darkness over logs and into pits. The party seemed to 
be in frantic flight. 

‘What's up?’’ I shouted, bursting upon them. Mulach stopped. 

‘“‘Where’s Juan?’ he demanded. 

I could have killed him. 

He seemed in utter bewilderment. Whether in fear of the darkness or unstrung by 
fatigue, he had been rushing on with the one wild hope of reaching home that night. 
That he was leaving two of us behind without food, that the way was long, the 
night dark and the forest trackless, that he could never get the horse through that 
wilderness at night, had not occurred to him. 

‘‘What shall we do?”’ he asked nervously. 

I told him we must camp. 

For camp we needed water. We plunged down the slope with Mulach hacking the 
way and uttering frenzied cries for Juan to hear. There in the darkness of a swampy 
glade we saw the glimmer of a pool, and in the woods near by we camped. Willie’s 
disgust with things was absolute. 

He and I worked together and made the camp. We built a great fire for warmth and 
a little one for our kettle. We put water on to boil, cut boughs for a bed and built a 
shelter of boughs against the wind. Mulach! I don’t know what he busied himself 
about. I found him starting to put up his tent on some logs and brush, took pity on 
him and chose a better site. Juan came; and such a length of idle conversation as 
ensued between master and man no gossip could exceed. 

‘‘First,’’ Mulach said, ‘‘we change our socks.’’ And so they did, sitting before the 


(80) 





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HALF-CLEARED FOREST 





VOYAGING 


great fire I had built for them, Mulach and Juan. They were like children, innocent 
of plan or order. 

“Here you see,”’ called over Mulach, “‘the difference between the South American 
and the North American way of cooking. You have a pot and we use none.”’ 

Meanwhile our soup was coming to a boil. When I served it to them the roast had 
not yet been put on. 

“Shall we have the meat tonight or for breakfast ?’’ Mulach asked us innocently. 
“It is a leg of mutton.”’ 

“We have it tonight,’’ I said. 

After the soup there was a long time of waiting. Mulach and Juan said they were 
not hungry—but they made away in the interim with almost all our small supply of 
bread. At last we served the coffee, and drank it. And maybe half an hour after that 
the mutton a la South America was removed from the fire and placed on its long spit, 
sticking in the ground between us. It was fine! 

Bedtime came. Out of the bundles from the horse’s back were taken a canvas 
poncho, a heavy homespun woolen poncho and a great broad robe of guanaco skins. 
All of these and the sheepskins from under the pack saddle were carried into the tent 
by Juan and a bed made of them. We watched in dumb astonishment. But when 
Mulach suddenly disappeared into the tent with a cheerful ‘‘good-night, there’s 
room for one more inside if you want to come,”’ the air was thick with our unspoken 
thoughts. In a few minutes, as we lay there on the ground beside our fire, we heard 
the master’s well known, gentle snoring. 

One miserable night is easily borne. We had no coats nor covering of any kind, and 
it was freezing cold. We laughed a bit at the absurdity of it. The mate slept now and 
again. I stoked the fire, welcoming for warmth’s sake the need there was of roaming 
about in search of firewood. I'd stir up the fire and by its light roam into the woods 
and drag back fallen trunks and roots. Just before dawn I slept a little. 

When I got up at daylight to put the kettle on, Juan came out of the tent and helped. 
Willie slept on like a child. He had edged up nearly into the flames. With breakfast 
ready we called Mulach. He came stumbling out still half asleep, rubbing his eyes to 
make them meet the light. 

“Oh, what a night!’’ he moaned, ‘I didn’t sleep a wink.”’ 

That was our chance. We told him we had slept too warm, that we'd been forced to 
strip off some of our clothing in the night. We boasted of the great hardihood of 
Americans, who always slept coverless upon the ground when camping. 

““Sometimes,”’ I told him, ‘““when the snow is deep and it is blowing hard we build 
a barricade of ice against the wind—but blankets ?—never.”’ 

We regained our trail of the day before and hurried home. Passing across wild 
meadows we kindled them. The smoke rose in dense volume into the sky, and the 
morning sun shone through it luridly. At home Mulach went straight to bed. 


(83 ) 


VOYAGING 


Through pride I wouldn’t, but grew ever more boastful of the intrepidity of North 
Americans. One day and night had gained me an ascendancy that I never relinquished. 

But somehow we liked Mulach even better after this. The ‘‘great expedition’’ was 
over. We had turned back without accomplishing what we'd set out so resolutely to 
do; we had found the limit of our guide’s illimitable energy and the evaporation 
point of his morale. We had, after all, explored a man; and it had been my privilege 
to look with understanding vision, as from an eminence, over the dreary foreground 
screen of masculine intrepidness into the sweet plains of a childlike nature. That 
Mulach had slept with all the bedclothes was only the thoughtlessness of a tired 
man. He had been good-natured and docile, and that was everything. It was fortunate 
that his wife believed in him, and right that she adored him. And if ever in a cold 
night one needed covering, Mulach, if asked, would give it—to his last guanaco 
robe. 

‘‘How did it happen,”’ we inquired of Juan, ‘‘that all those things were brought?” 

‘I brought them,’’ he answered—and laughed. ‘‘I know him.” 


(84) 





fl 





CHAPTER XII 


WIND-BOUND 


LL this time it was the wind that held us captive to the hospitality of the 

farm. It had seemed futile, as long as it held contrary, to attempt to sail 

out of Admiralty Sound, or even to move our boat from the river to a 

suitable anchorage outside. Every morning first of all we ran down to 

the shore and scanned the water and the sky; and every night at bedtime we looked 
with the same anxious hope aloft, and speculated on what change of wind the dawn 
might bring. And every day and night—but for an hour’s calm at twilight—the 
wind was west. We pinned our faith upon the changes of the moon—and waited. 

At last the particular day drew near and we prepared to return to the port. It was 
the mate this time who rode with Juan to find the horses. They returned at nightfall, 
and the mate carried a young guanaco behind his saddle. The creature had been pain- 
fully mutilated by the hound that had caught it, but it was still alive. We locked it 
in the shed for the night. The next day it lay there still living but unable to rise; its 
long neck was held erect, and its gentle rabbitlike countenance was curiously un- 
expressive of the body’s suffering. I placed the muzzle of a revolver against the base 
of the skull and fired. The head jerked about convulsively and fell motionless. I had 
killed my first guanaco. 

Where two or three are the whole world, a parting is pathetic. We bade many sad 
farewells to our hostess, and then, loaded with gifts of butter and bread and mutton 
and skins, and accompanied by Mulach and Juan, rode off into the forest. 

But for the usual flounderings in the bog the trip was uneventful—except that my 
horse, wallowing in a soft hillside, lost his balance and rolled over, to the grave peril, 
if not of me, of my cameras and the eggs that were strapped to the saddle. He lay 


(85) 


V:OrF A.GaANEG 


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ABOVE JACKSON BAY 


there for a moment helpless, braced between his back and the sloping ground with 
his forelegs kicking in the air. But we pulled him around and with a quick struggle 
he got up. 

To our vast pride Mulach marvelled at the trimness of the Kathleen. He remained 
with us that night as our first night’s guest. We stuffed him with dainties and tucked 
him warm into bed. 

‘Some day,’’ I told him at breakfast, ‘‘you’ll come to North America to see us. 
And then I'll take you camping in American style.’’ And I narrated an adventure of 
sleeping almost naked on cakes of ice. 

Then, with many a good wish and the hope that we should meet again, we said 
good-bye to that kind, impulsive, generous man. 


And then the moon changed. That this betokened change of wind all weather 
bureaus, almanacs, ancient mariners, weather-beaten guides and trappers, all know- 
ing prophets of the wind and weather are agreed. Reason demands it, and conveni- 
ence, and the universal law of change. And we believed it with a faith that was 
fathered by a deep and ardent desire. 

So, that night, while the darkness imposed its wonted and expectant hush upon the 
elements, we put all things on board in order and retired early to be up to sail at dawn. 


(86) 





VOYAGING 


The dawn was breathless; but in that breathlessness we read the portent of a 
change. We went ashore and loosed our anchors from the roots where they were 
buried, we made the stern lines ready to cast off; we went below and breakfasted— 
and waited. And then, ever so gently, came the wind, came in little gusts that rippled 
up the water: and that wind was west. By ten o’clock the sky was overclouded and 
the interminable west wind howled as if the defiance of all law and of our hopes had 
sharpened its ferocity. 

And now again for days we lay there wind-raked at our anchorage. The ocean tide 
and river current swirled about us. Even in that landlocked place the swell beat in 
and rocked us heavily. We couldn't sail. And the discomfort of our cabin was only 
preferable to the raw, tempestuous out-of-doors. It must be said that there were hours 
or quarter-hours of such contrasted warmth and loveliness that summer seemed to 
smile. Then the sheep would leave their sheltered huddling in the woods and take 
their new-born lambs for stilted frolics on the broad pasture plain. But very soon the 
clouds would close again and hide the sun, and, in a storm of wind, white winter 
would come again and cover the mountains and the plain with snow. 

In such days of confinement as those we endured at our anchorage in the Azapardo 
River, when the world was narrowed to the bounds of a boat’s cabin, and adventure 
was reduced to the hazards of bread making and dish washing, one’s diary becomes a 
record of introspective journeys rather than of action. 

“It is now the third of November,”’ reads the page, ‘‘almost full moon, and a 
rising tide. The glass stands at 29. The west wind rakes our anchorage with undimin- 
ished force, whistling and howling. The tide rip gurgles venomously against our 
hollow sides, the seas strike us and hurl spray fiercely over us. Our cable creaks. The 
boat is rolling heavily and trembling when the squalls strike. I am driven from my 
reverie to bed. 

“Tt is not easy to go to sleep on such a night as I have just recorded. Now, from 
another day, I look back upon it. I lay there in my bed listening to the innumerable 
sounds, and feeling by my close contact with the boat’s thin sides her trembling 
response to the wild forces of the sea and wind. Sleep seemed impossible—yet, 
suddenly, I slept; and with that sleep all memory of the causes of my waking anxiety 
vanished. Still, as I must believe from the fragments of dreams that have been spared 
me out of that oblivion, I was by sleep transported to a world of the imagination as 
tragically full of peril, more harassing and, to the mind, in every way as real as the 
frightening actuality. I carried into sleep no memory of the daylight world, yet out 
of sleep I bore the recollection of experiences so terrible and of desire so hopeless of 
fulfillment that the mood of night clung like a pall about my consciousness. Of man’s 
two existences, by day and night, night dominates. 

“One of the ancient Christian faith would piously attribute his dreamt anxieties 
to visitations of Satan. But, as a pagan on the quest of happiness, I perceive them to 


(87) 


VOYAGING 


be the warnings of a man’s own spirit that he may not forsake friendship and love 
and hope to live at peace.”’ 

At last a day dawned overcast and calm and ominous of change. And then, toward 
noon, out of the pregnant stillness came—could we believe it!—a gentle east wind. 
With wild precipitation we weighed anchor and on the swift current of the river 
swept out through the narrow channel to the sound. We have a moment’s memory of 
the friends we leave. ‘‘Farewell!’’ our hearts cry, ‘“‘we are sailing westward!"’ 


An hour had passed. Every ripple had vanished and the sound lay as a mirror to 
the mountains. The air was breathless and our sails hung slack. For hours it held like 
this, while, helpless on the tide, we drifted to and fro. Then came the wind: far to 
the west we saw the water darkening in its path. It struck in squalls. In a rising 
storm under a sky as black as nightfall we made Jackson Bay and, under the scant 
shelter of its northern shore, dropped anchor. 

Again for days we were held at anchor by the wind that blew with almost un- 
abating violence. Once, in a lull, where there was, we thought, some indication ofa 
coming change, we hoisted sail and beat out of the bay. The sky was leaden overhead 
and strangely near; and in the west it was a pallid yellow. Then, while the glass fell, 
the day became as dark almost as night. With sudden divination of trouble we came 
about and ran for port again. We reached our anchorage with wild squalls howling 
at our heels. 

While we made the most of our incarceration by expeditions over the surrounding 
country, finding in the rugged grandeur of the overhanging northern mountain range 
and in the green and quiet twilight of the groves beauties enough to have contented 
us, still we grew restless under inactivity. The mountains lost their splendour in our 
eyes, the wilderness its charm; the unrelenting fury of the wind enraged us. Down the 
long stretch of Admiralty Sound, between its mountain walls and cliffs, it blew with 
an accumulated violence; and if aloft it veered a few points off, the canyon walls 
deflected it and held it in the groove. And it was not a steady wind: moments of 
almost calm would be followed by outbursts of concentrated fury as the congested 
gale was released to fall upon us from the mountain faces. 


* Captain Willis of the missionary schooner Allen Gardiner wrote 
—July 2nd (18832)—of a trip of 280 miles, from Ushuaia to 
Punta Arenas, that took 110 days. 

‘On the 30th, the wind went to the south, blew a gale, and 
veered to north. We anchored on the wind falling light and 
variable before dark, and got under way this morning. Now 
it is calm and we are drifting helplessly back again . . 

I venture to say that calms and light weather, in which we are 
nearly stationary, often continue long enough to make a pas- 
sage to Sandy Point, anchoring every night. These are gener- 
ally followed by bad weather, in which it is almost impossible 


(88 ) 


and dangerous to go, while night work is out of the question. 
We are now about 110 miles from Ooshooia in 26 days. 
‘Had this galecaughtus in thenight weshould have assuredly 
been lost, as it is impossible to see anything, and very small sail 
canbecarried, and often lowered down for five or ten minutes at 
a time. Compass and lead and log are of no use in these narrow 
waters, and if the vessel was to drift on some of these places 
she is so sharp she would, in all possibility, fall over and fill, if 
she was not knocked to pieces, and it would be useless getting 
a boat out ona lee shore. This is acknowledged by all nations 
to be one of the most dangerous places in the known world.” 





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Our boat, moreover, was not adapted to fine sailing. She made leeway and was 
slow in coming about. So we were often discouraged by losing in stays all that we 
had gained by half an hour’s sailing. The tides were swift; and while not strong 
enough to help us much against a wind of any violence could, when contrary, more 
than check our progress. 

And of the moods of the days of waiting the diary is a record. 

“November seventh. It is late at night as I begin to write. For two hours we have 
sat here in the darkness of the cabin. The firelight shines through the grate, casting 
a faint warm glow about the room. The wind blows in terrifying squalls upon us, 
howling, careening us—and then for a few minutes it is quite still. The boat rocks 
gently, the little waves gurgle pleasantly against the sides, the clock ticks loudly; 
there is no sound in the world besides. Then again, far off, the forests of the mountain 
side begin to roar—nearer comes the sound and louder. Suddenly the gurgling water 
and the ticking clock, the little sounds that were so loud, are lost as the wild uproar 
of the wind engulfs us. 

“We sit in silence every night throughout the twilight. Often I play upon the 
flute, shutting my eyes to make the darkness darker; and my companion’s head is 


(89) 


VOYAGING 
















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bowed and resting on his hands. In these still hours the wisdom comes to us of know- 
ing our profoundest needs. 

‘Then with fatigue the glamour of adventure wanes; and loneliness comes over us 
and the sense that we are destitute of all that has sustained our lives. We that have 
come so far and left so much then know, out of the poignant singleness of our de- 
sires, what in the confusion and abundance of life’s offerings is best. But no one tells 
—so intimately close and dear is that desire. And when at last, suddenly in the dark- 
ness here, I ask my companion what one thing he desires most out of the whole 
world, tonight—he starts at the shattered silence, and, slowly emerging from far 
away to here, covers his thoughts and answers, ‘A fair wind to carry us through 
Gabriel Channel.’ ”’ 

However, there’s an end to everything. ‘‘Mate,’’I said one dreary night as we 
turned in, ‘‘I need a new chapter for my book. Tomorrow we sail no matter what 
happens.’’ And we did. 


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CHAPTER XIII 


“THE NEW CHAPTER” 


HE morning was overcast and there was a light uncertain breeze from the 
west. The barometer was normal, at 29.07. But these placid indications 
counted for nothing, in my judgment, against the prevailing changefulness 
of the weather. 

“‘We’'d better reef,’’ I ventured. 

“Not a bit of it!’’ cried my mad mate. ‘‘Reef when we have to.”’ 

And so, unreefed, we sailed, for from the beginning it had been our rule that the 
more incautious should prevail. 

The mate had more courage, blinder courage, more careless, reckless, stubborn 
nerve, than any man that I have ever seen or heard of. He was gifted to maintain this 
undiluted by any lessons of experience. He forgot yesterday. 

And he was closed against tomorrow. He was untroubled by imagination or by any 
doubt of the comprehensiveness and finality of the rules of practice he had learned. 
And that his knowledge of seamanship and navigation had been acquired in the sail- 
ing of big ships on the open sea only made him contemptuous of the temperament of 
narrow waters and of little boats, and of the counsel of men whose experience was 
limited to these. 

His rule of sailing and of life was contained in the old sailing-days expression, 
“carry on’’; and if some day, bearing full sail on sea or land, he doesn’t founder— 
then there’s a special providence over the folly of men. 

Once, long ago, I had said to him, ““The thing is not to carry sail, but to get 
there.’’ I had let it go at that and not concerned myself again—for after all it was an 


adventure. 
(92) 


VOYAGING 





ADMIRALTY SOUND I 


We were an hour beating out of the cove. The entrance is narrow and on one side 
beset with islands; and the tide was against us. And in that hour’s time the breeze 
died out and it grew ominously dark. Then the breeze freshened, blackening the 
water as it came. It takes no time to make a sea; whitecaps were flying and the spray 
broke over us. The barometer had dropped to 28.80. 

The northern coast of Admiralty Sound is an immense sheer mountain wall of rock. 
Between its towered and buttressed summits the glaciers hang suspended, and the 
water of their melting snows pours in cascades and rivulets down a thousand feet to 
the sea. You are nothing in a little boat beneath those terrifying heights. 

As the wind increased we worked for the shelter of Three Hummock Island that 

lay some miles further to windward. We still carried all sail but the jib, and the fre- 
quent squalls made necessary the most careful watchfulness in the handling of the 
boat. 

We had passed the island on our last long southern tack; the next leg of our course 
would bring us in its lee. The sky to windward was dark with the murk of formless 
low-hanging clouds. The squalls were violent and laid us well on our beam. When we 
had come about on our last tack I relinquished the tiller and went below to prepare 


supper. 


(92) 





VOYAGING 


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Then something happened. As if the whole accumulated forces of the wind had 
struck us, clattering and howling, we were beaten down. As I fell into a corner the 
whole place hurled itself upon me—table and stools and tins of food, the clock and 
the steaming supper. Somehow out of the hurtling confusion I laid hands upon the 
greatest mess of all, the sour dough, and held it upright—praise God, safe! For what 
seemed ages long the Kathleen lay that way, far over on her side; and then she slowly, 
slowly righted. 

We lowered the mainsail in the howling squall, and double-reefed it; then we 
limped toward land. The deck had been washed clear of every unlashed thing. 

“She's a good boat,’’ said the mate, ‘‘or she'd never have come up.”’ 

“What do you do,”’ I asked with affected ingenuousness a little later when we had 
made the shelter of the island, ‘‘when you're steering and a squall strikes you?”’ 

“You keep her off,’’ answered the mate. 

And as I now, a living man, sit here in the dry-land security of a Vermont hillside 
and record that answer of the mate, I know that there’s a providence for fools. 

I went ashore as soon as we had anchored, and the firm land seemed good again. 
I walked up the smooth pebble beach and entered the grove that bordered it. Here 
were canelo trees grown to a great size. Their bark is smooth like that of our beech 


(93) 


ViOTY As GUENGG 


and of a pinkish hue. The leaves are shaped like those of the laurel and are even a more 
polished brilliant green. Here among their branches flitted plump birds, like robins— 
but with light olive breasts and slate-green backs and brilliant orange legs and bills. 

It was my custom at every port we made to go ashore with paints and canvas and 
make such a record of the place as the time at my disposal and the weather allowed. 
The wind and the sudden storms of rain often drove me to a makeshift shelter, where 
I would either wait out the storm or leave my gear to be reclaimed at another time. 
The day following our arrival at Three Hummock I walked to the northeastern end 
of the island carrying my paints and a large canvas. Across the sound towered the 
immense cathedral mountains of the north shore. It was a dull, moist day and against 
the dark precipices of the mountain face gleamed the silver of cascades that flowed 
from the melting snow and glaciers of the heights. I set up my canvas on the shore, 
bracing it against the wind with driftwood. But hardly had I begun to work when 
the rain came in torrents. I fled with my canvas to the shelter of a ledge of rock. 
Quickly I converted the picture into a roof, and, crawling under it, lay down huddled 
on the stones, while over me the rain beat on the canvas like the rolling of a kettle- 
drum. It was damp and cold; so, seeking refuge from discomfort, I fell asleep. 

How long I slept I do not know. At last a silence awakened me. I crept out of my 
dark shelter into sunlight. The storm had passed and it was breathless calm. The wet 
rocks glistened and the shrubbery was hung with diamonds. But the mountains! 
Part sunlit and part veiled in trailing vapor shadows, illumined by the rainbow 
mist of swollen torrents, they stood for that one transient interlude peacefully and 
mildly beautiful. 

During the three days that we remained at this island the wind either blew from 
the west or it was calm. It might have contented us there for as many weeks or 
months, for the island was of diverse character with many charming groves and wild 
meadows and a varied shore; and, lying as it did about midway in the sound, it com- 
manded a view of the surrounding mountains that was not to be surpassed. But owing 
to the many delays that we had suffered, progress had now become an obsession to us 
and, if the Horn was to be reached, a necessity. So on the third day we fixed upon the 
next to sail—wind or no wind, fair wind or foul. And sail we did. 

We turned out at four-fifteen to find the day already risen and the clouds of night 
dispersing toward the east to leave the heavens clear and blue. The wind, of course, 
was west. It had, moreover, blown most of the night and raised a choppy sea against 
us. We beat for hours, returning after every southward tack close to the shore of 
Three Hummock Island where, to our discouragement, we marked our slow advance. 
By ten o'clock, having progressed only as far as the mouth of Parry Harbor and 
knowing that we should not, by continuing, reach another port that day, we entered 
there. A dying wind bore us at length into Stanley Cove, where more than two weeks 
before we had anchored for one night. 


(94) 





VOYAGING 


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NORTHWARD FROM THREE HUMMOCK ISLAND 


It was quite different on this sunlit peaceful day; and two weeks had advanced the 
spring so that the lighter green of budding trees was mingled with the dark ever- 
greens, and young grass covered the bits of meadowland and fringed the beach. 
There on the shore beside a running brook we found again the framework of two 
Indian huts identical with those others that we had seen on Dawson Island. What- 
ever prompted the natives in the selection of their camp sites, it coincided with the 
judgment of our sense of quiet beauty. It may be that esthetics are a sublimation of 
necessity. 

The day continued mild and fair; and in the afternoon, a light breeze having risen, 
we set sail for Bahia Blanca, which is the southeast arm of Parry Harbor. We took 
the skiff in tow and, having in hand a couple of sheepskins that needed washing, 
tied them to a long line and towed them along, too. 

Somewhere on the shore of Bahia Blanca was a small lumber mill; and our excur- 
sion there was prompted by a need of tobacco. We'll see the place, we thought, get 
the tobacco, and return to Stanley Cove tonight. And as we sailed serenely over that 
placid bay, with the sun shining on us and the whole region about us so quietly 
beautiful, we felt that a change of fortune had dawned on us, and that mild weather 
and prospering winds would henceforth attend our progress. 


(95) 


VOYAGING 


Ss) ‘ 
Aw 


Meanwhile, unobserved by us, clouds had mounted in the west, till suddenly the 
sun was obscured; and with that shadow the glad mood of the day was gone. The 
mantle of clouds spread itself over the sky and it grew dark. The wind freshened. 
Gloriously we drove through the black water with crested waves tacing at our side. 
Bahia Blanca opened up its length before us. Beyond its head was a lofty snow white 
region of mountains from which a broad glacier poured down to meet the bay. 

““Look,”’ cried one of us, ‘‘what is that smoke down on the water by the glacier?”’ 

Clouds of smoke appeared driving across the water not only at the foot of the 
glacier but along the mountainous western shore. We were to learn, and that within 
a quarter of an hour, what fury of the wind that smoking sea betokened. 

The wind had now become a gale, so that even with our mainsail reefed, as it was, 
we carried too much sail. The skiff at our stern was yawing and plunging frightfully, 
threatening at every moment to capsize, while the taut towline of our sheepskins 
made another hazard in the skiff’s frantic career. We tried to pull the skiff alongside 
to draw it on board, but it had taken too much water to be manageable. 

The confusion astern deterred us from coming up into the wind to take another 
teef, so, sailing as we were before the gale, we attempted to lower the mainsail. 
When the peak dropped, the sail filled like a balloon and the throat stuck fast. In 
an instant the mate was up the mast and trampling on it. Down with a run it came 
while the loose canvas beat wildly over everything. We hauled the plunging boom 
on board and secured it. 

Meanwhile from behind a little wooded island some buildings had come into view 
on the western shore. We changed our course a few points to windward and held for 
them under the staysail; that was sail enough. There under the land we found the 


(96) 








a a a en 


VOYAGING 


meaning of that smoking sea. The wind beat down upon us from the mountain side 
in furious squalls, lashing the water into spray and driving it over us in drenching 
clouds. 


We near the land; and yet, beside the scant shelter of the island, no harbor reveals 
itself. But in the lee of that two boats lie tugging at their moorings. Riding high on 
a foaming sea, through streaming kelp and driving spray, we're there. There’s a 
flopping of canvas and a long smooth glide into the wind, a rattle of the chain, a 
plunge, the vibrant rubbing of the hawser paying out; then suddenly it’s calm and 
we ride at anchor. We look at each other then and laugh—and the whole galleried 
wilderness of forests toss their caps and roar. 

While we furled the sails and set the deck in order, our eyes rested on the storm- 
swept bay. It had become a smoking maelstrom of fury. 


(97) 

















CHAPTER XIV 


TWO GENTLEMEN 


E lay barely fifty yards from the shore. Here, just above the tide’s 

reach stood the long shed of the mill. Opposite this was a small 

building which, we came to know, was intended as the office and 

the house of the manager; and farther back, suggesting the third 
side of an open quadrangle that faced the bay, stood a long low building in which the 
men were quartered. Peering out at us from the sheltered cover of the mill shed stood 
aman. And though we greeted him with every wave of courtesy he made no answer- 
ing sign, just watched us stolidly. It’s no great pleasure to be stared at, stolidly; and 
we muttered our opinion of the ungracious fellow. 

What was our delight, however, on rowing ashore, to have him meet us at the 
water's edge with the most winning smile of welcome, wading into the surf to seize 
our skiff and help us draw it up the beach! 

“‘Bienvenida,’’ said he, shaking our hands; and he bade us enter the house to get warm. 

There, in the kitchen of the bunk house, with another man who presently appeared, 
we tasted of a hospitality that was to last for weeks and began a friendship that is 
not forgotten. 

These two young Chilean lumberjacks, Don Antonio and ‘‘Curly’’ Cit was all we 
ever learned to call him), revealed to us that gentlemen, in that romantic sense of 
“those who are possessed of good manners, kindness of heart, and strict integrity 
and honor,’’ do flower in life beyond the reach of education and the traditions of 
culture. Little did these men know of the wide world; they were i gnorant, illiterate, 
and superstitious. But even their Christian superstition had the grace of tolerance. 

One dark night, Don Antonio related to me, when the wind was blowing every- 


(98) 





VOYAGING 


thing about the place, the devil came and set the machinery of the mill going and 
sawed some lumber. They found the new-sawn boards lying there in the morning. 

“Did he do good work ?”’ I asked. 

“Lovely work,’ said Don Antonio. He was not a bigot. 

Perhaps nothing moved me so much as their respect for my vocation and their 
unprompted recognition of its privacy. Only a painter can appreciate this high and 
grateful tribute that I pay them: they left me alone. 

It cannot be said that we settled down at Bahia Blanca. We lived on board and 
lived in readiness for instant departure should the wind change to favor us; yet the 
establishment on shore became our headquarters by day, while between the Chilefios, 
who were the sole occupants of the place, and ourselves there sprang up a pretty 
interchange of courtesies that never lacked a pleasant flavor of formality. 

The one luxury of the mate’s equipment on the Kathleen was a cheap, portable 
phonograph with a broken mainspring, and three cracked discs. The records were 
beyond repair; but I spliced and riveted the springs of the machine and, having but 
two sewing needles and no pins on board, made needles out of nails, and tempered 
them—and so the thing was made to emit an enjoyable, fragmentary, ghastly kind 
of music. We always carried the machine ashore, that and my silver flute. 

I'd play the flute a while of an evening while everyone sat silent in polite attention. 
I would play the slow movements of Beethoven sonatas, ‘‘My Wandering Boy,’’ and 
such like classical selections as my stiff fingers could accomplish. And at the con- 
clusion they'd release their suppressed coughs and say “‘Lindo, muy lindo!’’—which 
means ‘‘very lovely.’’ And then on the phonograph, we'd have the undamaged last 
half of “‘Oh What a Pal Was Mary,’’—and to that they would say ‘“‘Lindo.’’ So we 
were very happy. We’d eat heartily of roast mutton, have more music and a very 
little conversation, and with mutually repeated expressions of adieu be escorted to 
the shore. 

The world has today become too small for some knowledge of the customs of all 
lands not to have penetrated even to the remotest wilderness. While our friends in 
Bahia Blanca knew nothing of our American political constitution, and little of our 
commercial and scientific achievements, they had been reached and impressed by 
North American art. Curly’s hair was of a year’s growth; he was a bit ashamed of it. 
It was indeed as immense a shock of curls, exuberant and black, as one might ever see. 
On learning that I was a barber he begged me to shear him. I had a perverse desire to 
crop those locks, but he deterred me. 

*““Give me,’’ he said, “‘a real North American haircut.’’ And he described it 
minutely. 

Accordingly, adhering strictly to his instructions, I clipped the lower hair up to 
a sharp line about an inch above the ears, clipped it so close that the bleached scalp 
showed blue through the coarse stubble. Above that I left the black mass to flower 


(99) 


VOYAGING 


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OUR ANCHORAGE—BAHIA BLANCA 


like a huge chrysanthemum upon its stalk. With a professional flourish I removed the ~ 


towel from my patron’s neck, and presented him with the mirror. 

“Lindo!” he cried, and “‘Lindo!’’ echoed Don Antonio coming in to view it. And 
smiling with all the happiness of pride, Curly thanked me, saying there was no one 
like a North American to cut hair. And that is what in Tierra del Fuego they know 
of America! 

And so, between festivities and work, the days slid by. And the west wind either 
blew like fury or blew moderately, or there was no wind at all, and the mountains 
stood upon their heads reflected in the breathless calm of the green jade water of the 
bay. Sometimes our watchful eyes discovered that the clouds had changed their 
course. In wild excitement we would bid our friends good-bye, heave up anchor and 
sail out. But whatever currents might prevail among the clouds, down in that canyon 
of the sound there was no wind but west. We'd beat and drift and make a mile or two, 
and then, discouraged at such waste of time, turn tail and sheepishly come home. 

At the head of Bahia Blanca is a wide glacial moraine that extends inland to the 
blue-green cliffs of the glacier. The broad glacial stream pours down from a remote 
inland region that appears as the very desolation of Antarctic winter. Flanking the 
glacier on the east is an immense flat mountain-dome of rock, covered with ice and 
spotless snow. Between this ice-capped dome and the nearer mountain of the north- 


(100) 


| 
. 





VOYAGING 


east shore of Bahia Blanca is a broad valley bearing southeasterly. No barrier of 
mountains appears beyond the relatively low horizon of this valley, so that it seems 
to be a highway leading south. 

It was from the top of a little hill that stood at the edge of the moraine that I first 
saw this view; and then, and the many other times that I sat upon that sheltered 
hillside facing it, I was possessed by its beauty and moved to ponder on the insistent 
yet illusive significance that it contained for me. 

Is it mere chance that the forms and humors of nature appear as symbols of the 
moods, experiences and desires of the human spirit? The unbroken pathways of the 
wilderness are reminders of the hard and solitary way that ardent souls must travel. 
The glittering, virgin whiteness of high mountain-fields of snow, untrodden, maybe 
unattainable, their mist-veiled beauty neither earth nor cloud, remote, serene and 
passionless, picture the spirit’s aspiration. Can it have been the fervid imagination of 
man that has endowed these mountains with an aura of symbolism? Rather is it the 
reality of mountains and plains, the sea and the unfathomable heavens, unchangingly 
forever dominating man, cradling him in that remote hour of his awakening into 
consciousness, forever smiling, brooding, thundering upon him, that have imposed 
their nature upon man and made him what he is. 

And still, even where men dwell in the environment of their own creation, the 
wilderness casts its light and shadow into their dreams. Trees murmur in the city’s 
night; men hear the thunder and the wash of seas. The moon’s light shines to them 
on silver peaks; the wild, eternal glory of the universe appears. Unrest possesses 
them, and they awake to the adventurous courage of their race’s past, and go. 

It is not choice that draws men from comfort and security into the hazards of 
adventure or the miseries of solitude, but rather an impulse profounder than con- 
sciousness and more forceful than reason. It may be likened to a reassertion of the 
will to the achievement of high purpose. And in that the denials and perils that are 
sought resemble the soul-paths of virtue is concealed the truth that nature is the 
parent of our moral thought. 

There as I sat one afternoon upon that sheltered hillside and viewed the varied 
beauty of the scene veiled in mistlike rain, the plain traversed by intersecting glacial 
streams of milky water and islanded with groves of trees and bits of meadowland, 
the lower mountains clothed in forests of the deepest green, the high slopes red with 
budding shrubbery, the dazzling summits, and the valley that forever seemed a high- 
way to a promised land—then, as I looked far up that valley’s green-clad, gently 
rising plain to where it dipped from view and left the whole beyond a mystery, a 
strange thing came to pass. The grey mist of the rain became transfused with golden 
light and in the broad gap where my eyes were fixed gleamed a pale rainbow. It was 
only for a moment; then the mists dispersed and sunlight flooded everything. That 
was November the twenty-fourth. 

(ror) 


VOYAGING 


Under that date my diary reads: ‘“‘It is at last dark after the long twilight, and the 
lights of the men’s house and on the Kathleen are extinguished. I sit in the bare, 
wood-walled room of one of the mill outbuildings at a window overlooking the 
water. Rain beats upon the panes. Squalls sweep the bay and the surf roars on the 
shore. The breeze that penetrates around the window sash flutters my candle. The 
wind blows straight in upon us from the northwest; it never changes. We have given 
up all hope of sailing west and southward, for we could never beat out through this 
sound and Gabriel Channel. It is a conclusion that we have found hard to face. 

‘However, we will continue southward—on foot; and on the day after tomorrow 
we will start up the valley from the head of Bahia Blanca.” 

There is always a fascination in assembling the equipment and provisions for an 
expedition, whether it be for a picnic luncheon in the country or for a cruise of many 
months. This time the certain difficulties of the enterprise that we were undertaking 
and the uncertainty of the time that it would occupy us imposed the attractively con- 
flicting problem of loads both light and comprehensive. Moreover, the problem of 
supplies was complicated by our penury. We were heading to be sure, for the town of 
Ushuaia, where undoubtedly meals could be obtained and supplies purchased. But 
for this we had no money. And while there was the possibility of someone’s be- 
friending us with a few days’ board, we had no thought of obtaining credit. Yet 
somehow Cape Horn was to be reached, and to that time if not beyond it we must live. 

But even more of an encumbrance than our food supplies were the heavy materials 
of my unfortunate profession; and allied to these were the cameras. The kodak would 
have been enough, but I had not entirely succeeded in repairing the damaged shutter 
and it was good for only very short exposures. So the bulky Graflex had to go. And 
there was the flute. I don’t know definitely why I carried it about, for sometimes for 
days I would not play upon it; but then would come an hour when above all other 
useful things the flute alone was a necessity. 

So after the most studied consideration I began assembling the equipment. As 
things were passed on deck and checked off on my list the mate loaded them into the 
skiff and carried them ashore to a room that had been put at our disposal in the man- 
ager’s house. And when this had been accomplished I went ashore with my list and 
checked them over. And it was then that a most lamentable thing occurred, the very 
memory of which fills me with shame. 

“Where,”’ Lasked the mate after I had thoroughly inspected the equipment, ‘‘is the 
revolver ?’’ 

“I put it on the table,”’ he replied. 

Together we went through everything; it was clearly not there. Although both 
the mate and I recalled its having been brought ashore I went aboard again and 
searched. We searched the path from the shore, and the skiff—in vain. 

And always the mate affirmed that he had put it on the table. 


( 102 ) 
































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No room for doubt was left; and with an ugly conviction I went to Don Antonio 
and told him what had occurred. 

It was not till he had himself searched carefully through our effects that he would 
credit what I had told him. ‘‘He is a very honest man,’’ he said of Curly; and much 
perplexed, he went to speak to him. 

As I saw it afterwards, Curly’s quiet, hurt denial of the charge was mote expressive 
of his innocence, of his entire innocence of any comprehension of theft, than anger 
would have been. And it made my subsequent remorse more poignant. 

That denial ended it as far as I concerned myself; the gun was gone. 


It was an hour later when the receding tide exposed the revolver to the searching 
eyes of Don Antonio. 


Our equipment now lay ready to be made into the two packs. It was as follows: 


Salt Tooth Powder Revolver 
Sugar Nails Ammunition 
Eggs Cameras Blankets 
Milk Films Razors 

Dried Soup Paper Brush 

Tea Paints Socks 


( 104) 





Baking Powder 
Flour 
Chocolate 
Corn Meal 
Frying Pan 
Cups 

Spoons 
Kettles 
Bacon 

Pail 

Soap 

Tooth Brush 


VOYAGING 


Tobacco 
Pipes 
Candles 
Lantern 
Bandage 
Credentials 
Painting Materials 
Brushes 
Medium 
Paints 
Canvas 
Stretchers 


Shoes 

Needle and Thread 
Flute 

Tent 
Barometer 
Ground Cloth 
Compass 
Lasso 

Wire 

Tacks 
Whetstone 
Axe 


( 105 ) 


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CHAPTER tay 


THE RAINBOW PATH 


EFORE dawn of that momentous day, November twenty-fourth, we were 
up and dressed. Energy again possessed us, for the decision to abandon the 
boat had broken the inertia that had become the habit of our days, and set 
us free again for action. While the mate cooked breakfast I went ashore and 

roused our two friends; half an hour later, having made everything secure on board, 
we left the Kathleen; I was never, as it proved, to tread her deck again. 

The equipment for our expedition had been made into two packs, each weighing 
sixty pounds. Loading these into the small boats belonging to the mill, we embarked 
in company with the two Chilefios, who had proposed to be our guides over the few 
miles of our route with which they were familiar, and proceeded to row diagonally 
across the bay toward a cove at the head on the northeastern side. The day was over- 
cast; and any last misgivings that we felt as to the wisdom of the step that we were 
taking were mercifully disposed of—for the wind again was west. 

It was low tide and our landing was made on a slippery rocky shore along which, 
moreover, we had to struggle for a quarter of a mile at the great hazard, laden as we 
were, of breaking our legs and necks at the very outset of our journey. 

On reaching the head of the cove we struck inland across the marshland and bog 
that composed the border of the moraine. And if anything could have deterred us from 
continuing it must have been those first fatiguing miles. We presently, however, 
reached dry soil again and in the cool depths of a vaulted forest laid our packs aside 
and rested. It was quiet in that sheltered sanctuary. The long dark aisles were here 
and there illuminated by shafts of sunlight that filtered through the tracery of leaves 
as through rose-windows of stained glass; and everywhere the rich green velvet of 


( 106) 





VOYAGING 











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LAST GLIMPSE OF PARRY HARBOR 





the forest floor was starred with yellow violets. That forest was in truth a church 
of vast and solemn sanctity. The stillness was its music: the solitude its invocation. 
And the more as our devotion was unconscious did it purge our souls of their vague 
tremors: for here the wilderness disclosed its peacefulness. 

We had heard and read too much of the virtual impenetrability of the mountain 
regions of Tierra del Fuego and in our short inland excursions had experienced enough 
of the difficulties of travelling there not to have realized that in attempting to cross 
the virgin wilderness of Brecknock Peninsula our endurance might be taxed to its 
very limit. While there are two established routes across the mountains from the 
north to Beagle Channel, these are at the eastern end of Lago Fognano where the 
mountain ranges are less lofty and rugged. The farthest western passage was made 
by the explorer priest Padre Agostini when, accompanied by an Italian Alpine moun- 
taineer, he crossed with great hazard and difficulty from near the outlet of Lago 
Fognano. Considering Brecknock Peninsula as extending westward from the head of 
Admiralty Sound, there is no record of its having been crossed: and certainly the lofty 
Valdivieso and Darwin range present a barrier that might well deter men from 
attempting it. Nevertheless, a serviceable passage across the peninsula would con- 
siderably shorten the route from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia. 


( 107) 


VOYAGING 


To the two Chilefios, accustomed as they were to the imprisonment of the wilder- 
ness, this seemed a mad adventure that we were embarking on. We, however, looked 
only at its accomplishment and felt the exhilaration and confidence of men released by 
their own decision to follow on a quest that difficulties had but exalted to a passion. 
And if at first our untrained bodies staggered under their unaccustomed loads our 
hearts were light and we were careless of fatigue and of what unknown trials might 
confront us. 

After a few minutes’ rest in the forest we reshouldered our packs and continued on 
our way. We presently emerged into open country to ascend a mounting succession of 
hillocks, on reaching whose last summit we paused again and rested, with the view 
to justify us. Behind us lay the bay that we had left and the far mountains of the 
sound, and before us—almost at our feet, so near they seemed in their immensity— 
the turquoise cliffs of the glacier. The sloping ice field of its surface vanished up- 
wards in a bank of clouds that hid the mountains of its source: so that its own rim 
seemed to touch the sky as if beyond it there were nothing. 

A guanaco, browsing across the plain, took fright at us and dashed away. Over 
our heads a condor soared with motionless wings, slowly, in great circles, passing 
and repassing so close that we could count the outspread feathers of his wing tips. 
And, as he turned, the sun gleamed on his sleek, black sides. 

Then down we plunged to the level of the plain again, crossed a deep stream and, 
following it, entered the forest of the valley. But here where the way might have 
been difficult were smooth guanaco paths, so that we travelled on them almost at a 
trot. Up hill and down we went, for the river now flowed through a gorge that was 
impossible to follow closely. Yet always we approached that wooded summit that 
from the bay had been the farthest we could see. Then camea hard, steep climb—and 
we were there. 

We saw below usa broad, flat, grassy plain with the winding river flowing through 
it. The mountains rose abruptly on the north and south, but at the far end, over a 
barrier of lower hills, opened the gap of our valley, still leading on. Descending to 
the plain, we made our way across the marshy ground to meet the stream: and there, 
overshadowed by a cliff perhaps a thousand feet in height, we stopped for lunch. 

With consideration that was characteristic of them our two friends partook but 
sparingly of the simple meal of bread and tea that we spread for them, insisting that 
we conserve our provisions lest we have need of them on our journey. This last 
thoughtfulness of those kind fellows lingers in my mind, for it was here that we left 
them. They embraced us affectionately, wished us good fortune and a quick return, 
and we parted on our opposite ways. 

On reaching the end of the plain we began the ascent of a succession of steep hills, 
whose tangled slopes, the guanaco paths having eluded us, offered the most trying 
obstacles to progress. We struggled through thickets of dwarfed trees choked with 


( 108 ) 





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NOON OF THE FIRST DAY 


thorny underbrush and fallen trunks, across a small stream, and up sheer banks and 
hillsides. And every hill we climbed, while it appeared to be the last, proved but the 
threshold of another. 

At thirteen hundred feet we reached the top. It was above the timber line and from 
its bare summit we looked down over the wide plain that we had passed and over the 
wooded ridge from which we had descended to it, to the far-away blue mountains of 
Bahia Blanca. Here where we stood the mountains crowded close and pinched the 
valley, and the overflowing ice-cap of the northern range hung as if suspended over 
us, immense and terrifying. Yet, but a little way below us and beyond, was a most 
peaceful little flat of meadowland, with a winding stream and a pond with wild 
geese swimming on it; and near at hand at the river’s source was a small glacier, 
gleaming like a jewel against the somber earth-tones of the rocks and shrubbery. 
Spring had already entered here, and the winter’s snow that must have deeply cov- 
ered everything had vanished but for the drifts remaining in the sheltered clefts. 

Down on that plain against the sheltering hillside we threw off our burdens and 
rested. And, I may record, the echoes of that peaceful place were for the first time— 
and, we may believe, the last, forever—awakened to expression by the sweet and 
plaintive tones of the silver flute. Yet that was a delusion, for man at last was come; 
and my revolver shot that killed a goose told more truly of his coming. 


( 109) 


VOYAGING 


Two condors soared about, not far above us as we sat there resting; and presently 
there appeared a guanaco. He ascended a spur of the mountain and was lost to sight. 

Beyond the meadow we again ascended a small succession of stony hills and at 
fourteen hundred feet stood upon the watershed of the defile. And now at last the 
long valley lay before us and justified our faith in the road that we had chosen. 
Between straight mountain walls it lay for twenty miles, an undulating downward- 
sloping plain varied with groves and meadows, hills and streams, that in the aura of 
the far away appeared a cultivated scene. The foreground was a rock-strewn plain 
not difficult to travel on. 

Over the plain on every hand grazed guanacos; we counted nearly a hundred of 
them. Some showed great curiosity at our presence and bounded toward us. On near 
approach they grew more cautious, pausing, advancing again timidly, retreating in 
sudden panic to return again to look at us. One, bolder than the rest, after each flight 
came closer. Then at last with great assurance he approached deliberately. Reaching 
a knoll not fifty yards away, he stood there motionless, regarding us. We remained 
stock-still lest our movements should again alarm him. At last, his curiosity satisfied, 
he lay down. Nor was he disturbed when we again walked on; and it was only to 
pass near to us at a mad run that he left his place of observation. Down the hill 
he bounded over the boulder-strewn plain. Reaching the stream he leaped it with 
finished grace and finally, with pace unslackened, disappeared among the trees. 

As we advanced the difficulties increased. Our course on the right bank of the 
stream became impeded here and there by bog and dwarfed trees or by ravines and 
precipitous hillsides. As always, then, the other shore looked better. But the stream 
had accumulated such volume that to cross it without a thorough wetting became a 
problem. At last, at a narrow place where the rapids raced between steep walls of 
rock, we managed it. Of course, it was no better there. 

We reached a forest where the stream flowed in many channels over a broad gravel 
bed: there on the river bank in the darkness of twilight and the falling rain we made 
our camp. 

It was but a few minutes’ work to pitch the little sleeping tent; and while the 
mate plucked the goose I built a fire and hung the kettle over it to boil. And presently 
with the goose well roasted on a spit, we sat there feasting in the utmost comfort, by 
the fire’s warmth made heedless of the rain. 

I think I was too tired to sleep: the ground was hard and the cold dampness seemed 
to penetrate the blankets. And my sleeping mate’s proximity forced me to rigidly 


forego such exercise as might have restored the circulation of my limbs. It wasawel- = 


come dawn that came at last. 

At seven we were on our way. From the very beginning we found hard going. The 
way was steep and obstructed with tangled underbrush. Occasional tributary streams 
to the main river crossed our path; and while none of them was of sufficient depth to 


(110) 





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GLACIER NEAR THE VALLEY’S SUMMIT 





have hindered our wading it, we would not readily submit to the discomfort of wet 
clothes. The valley proved at close hand to be more broken into minor hills and dales 
than our first distant view of it had discovered, and the meadowlands, alas, proved 
bog. It was after we had been for an hour or more immersed in the entanglements of 
the jungle that we again attained a height from which we held an unobstructed view 
of the valley. The day was grey but clearer than the day before, and beyond the 
varied slope in the blue haze of the distance appeared a vast plain enclosed, appar- 
ently, by mountains. Yet that it somehow opened toward the sea the streams were 
evidence. 

At last the main river again impeded our path; and rather than follow it to where 
against the northern range it flowed througha deep gorge, we undertook to cross it. 
The river here was deep and swift and for an hour we were occupied in bridging it 
with a long tree trunk. With this accomplished we carried our packs across and con- 
tinued dry-shod. 

It often seemed that whatever way, after careful deliberation, we chose was the 
wrong one; the left bank, if we trod the right, soon smiled at us invitingly; and if we 
forsook the river entirely for the illusion of another route, new obstacles appeared 
to reproach us for our bad judgment. So it was not long after our triumphant, dry- 


(113 ) 


VOYAGING 

















SS 





ONE CROSSING PLACE 


shod crossing of the river before we encountered a barrier of precipitous land whose 
ascent was more exhausting than five miles of average travelling. It isnot the distance 
that one covers laden with a pack that tires one but the occasional obstacles. Legs 
soon become accustomed to the load and do the work of normal walking uncomplain- 
ingly. But let the way become obstructed and one becomes soon conscious of fatigue. 
And when toward the day’s end the laden, tired traveller is confronted by a fallen 
tree, too high to clamber over and too near the ground to admit his crawling under 
it encumbered with the pack—then speaks the broken spirit with the wish that here 
might be the journey’s end. 

But in the main the travelling was not difficult and but for an accident to the mate 
we should have been in the highest spirits. We had reached good ground and were 
tramping briskly down the valley when he first spoke of a pain in his right foot, and 
admitted that he had endured it for some hours. An examination revealed no bruise 
and we attributed it vaguely to a strain. Nevertheless, throughout our journey it 


gave constant and increasing trouble, landing him eventually in a week’s confine: 
ment to his bed. 


(114) 


ViOsYeA GIN G 


The afternoon was well advanced, when, emerging from a forest of tall trees that 
clothed an elevation, we came again upon the river, sheer below us, a wide stream 
flowing over gravel flats. There we stopped and lit a fire, and rested—for we were 
tired, and had a lunch of bread and tea—for we were very hungry. 

We had no choice but to cross the river again and no choice but to wade it. Remov- 
ing shoes and stockings we accomplished this, although the glacier water was as 
cold as ice, and to our infinite joy found on the other side a smooth guanaco path. 
For miles we followed it along the stream through meadowland and woods; and at 
last where the shore was marshy it led us to the dry mountain side, yet still continued 
on our way. There, in the primeval forest was again the grandeur and the hallowed 
stillness that had been our benediction in the forest of Bahia Blanca, and there again 
were yellow violets starring the green carpet of the floor. 

As we sat and rested by a fallen giant tree that blocked the path we heard guanacos 
calling below us in the near-by thicket of the plain. Theirs is a strange cry, a pro- 
longed whinny yet with the timbre of a palpitating quack. I answered it and to my 
great joy found that my reply attracted them. From several spots arose their clamor- 
ous calls. Nearer and ever nearer they came while still I answered. Finally we heard 
the crackling of branches, and two guanacos emerged from the thicket but a little way 
from us. What they expected to find I don’t know: certainly not men. Discovering us 
they stopped short in their tracks; they looked at us for a moment and then, in 
panic, fled. 

Here it came to me that I had left my cap at our last resting place, and I returned to 
find it. While I was reproaching myself for thus wasting my strength and our time, 
I was rewarded by the discovery of the decaying frames of two Indian shelters. I was 
to learn in Ushuaia that in former years, when the English mission at that place was 
active, there had appeared occasional bands of Indians of the Alacaloof race, who by 
some unknown and difficult way had come across the mountains from the north. It 
was undoubtedly their traces that we'd hit upon. 

We walked until nightfall; and then, where the dry forest land again reached to the 
tiver bank, we pitched our camp. Wild fowl were everywhere in abundance, but we 
contented ourselves with the fried remains of our goose. We were very happy—all had 
gone so well; and a special contentment is for those who are so fortunate as to bear 
their goods and house upon their backs, for where they stop—no matter in what 
wilderness—is home. 

Seven of the morning saw us again upon our way: and this day from the outset we 
encountered such continuous hard going that the rare smooth stretches stand in my 
memory as garden spots. After some hours of clambering along the steep slope of the 
mountain side, where fallen trees and thickets everywhere obstructed us, we came 
upon a plain of short-cropped pasture land: our relief at treading that firm and un- 
obstructed ground was as if the burdens had fallen from our shoulders. Then, too, the 


(115) 


VOYAGING 


day was fair, and for the first time we saw the valley with the cheerful sunlight over 
it. We were on the border of that plain that on the morning of the day before had 
been visible to us in the blue haze of the distance. It was flat as the surface of a sea 
and islanded with groves; and the west wind swept the grass to waves of golden 
sheen. But the firm land was of short extent and on the course that we had laid 
straight down the center of the valley we soon encountered marshy soil that it was 
misery to travel over. Yet to the eye it was ever so alluring; and, in the belief that it 
must change for better, we held on. The marshland became bog, and that deceptive 
bog was velvet smooth with moss and not a mound or bush was there to mar its far 
extent. Its beauty was more eloquent than past experience, and we struck out into it. 

The first quarter of a mile was soft and we sank above our shoe tops, and the cold 
water oozed around our toes; the second quarter of a mile was softer so that we sank 
halfway to our knees and had to tread nimbly at that; the third quarter—we still 
held on like fools, hoping for firmer soil—found us wallowing. We were tired. We 
removed our packs and rested on them. And then, almost in a panic at this treach- 
erous thing that threatened to engulf us, we turned and struggled back to safety. 

There was nothing to do but seek the firm soil of the mountain side again. But 
unfortunately our path had followed a sort of peninsula of the prairie, and to reach 
the nearer northern mountains we had either to retrace our steps for several miles or 
cross a marsh that intervened between the prairie meadow and the mountain side. 
We chose the marsh. When one gets thoroughly wet he doesn’t care. We leaped upon 
the huge tussocks that stood like beehives out of the water. Sometimes we landed 
fairly upon them and kept our balance, sometimes we slipped off again and plunged 
into the water; and at last, there remaining little about us to be kept dry, we waded 
through regardless of the wet. Reaching the mountain side at last, we threw our 
packs aside, built a great fire, removed our soaking clothes and hung ee up to dry, 
stretched ourselves out in the fire’s warmth, and rested. 

The mate's foot was giving him great pain. It appeared to be the aie that had 
been strained. I whittled a splint for it and bound it up with sticking plaster: this 
afforded temporary relief. We were unfortunately not well supplied with shoes. The 
mate had a pair of well worn, high, moccasin-type boots which I had given him, and 
a pair of flimsy pointed oxfords. I had but one pair that could be worn: they were 
comfortable, square-toed working boots; they were old—having been thrice re-soled 
—but were still serviceable; but being low they were always filled with water. I 
carried another pair of boots that were a delight to the eye and a misery to the feet; 
strong, high moccasins, the very thing for such an expedition, they had developed 
the least little wrinkle, from whose steady, gentle and excruciating pressure on the 
tendon of the heel no device of splint or bandage could relieve me. I plead not igno- 
rance but poverty that we were travelling so ill supplied. 

But that day held surprises for us of the most startling nature. It must be remem- 


(116) 




















































































































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RAINBOW VALLEY 


VOYAGING 


bered that we journeyed through an unknown region toward the remote destination - 
of Ushuaia, which, so far as we knew, was the most westerly inhabited spot on the 
south shore of Tierra del Fuego. Of the rate of our progress we had no means of judg- 
ing. We had walked approximately twelve hours a day, but our route was tortuous 
and beset with obstacles that impeded and delayed us. More than that our track had 
been southeasterly we knew nothing. It was perhaps two hours after we had extri- 
cated ourselves from the bog before we again yielded to the allurements of the plain 
to leave the tree-strewn mountain side. 

This time it was a dry woodland flat that tempted us. Travelling rapidly along 
smooth paths we soon came to a rushing torrent whose channel was heaped with 
refuse of the forest. We built a bridge and crossed it and were about to enter the 
forest on the other side when suddenly—like Crusoe discovering the savage’s foot- 
prints in the sand—we saw on the smooth brown forest turf the prints of horses’ feet. 
We stared at them in bewildered joy; yet hardly had a surmise of their significance 
entered our heads when we were startled by a trampling of horses. 

There were four of them. How and whence they came concerned us later: our first 
thought was to capture one or more of them. But though we practiced every lure 
with salt and meal and stealthily crept near them with the lasso, they were entirely 
mistrustful, and soon galloped away into the forest. 

But there remained with us the knowledge that we had reached the frontier of a 
settlement, and the elation of having somehow neared our journey’s end. Yet we had 
many weary miles to go and the discouragement to face that day of being separated 
by deep streams and impassable bog from the dry hillside where we came to know our 
destination lay. 

It was late that afternoon and we still toiled along the cluttered mountain slopes; 
below us flowed a deep stream with the sodden plain of marsh and bog beyond it; it 
was hot, and mosquitoes swarmed about us, adding their pestering stings as a last 
torture to our weariness; across the valley shone the low sun upon green pastures over 
whose slopes crept tiny spots of white: for an hour—long before they came to view— 
we had heard, faintly from far away, the lowing of cattle and the bleat of sheep. Yet 
we couldn’t cross. 

And at nightfall, disheartened by the very nearness of the unattainable and too 
tired to be cheered by that we'd brought our journey’s end within our reach, we 
camped in a depression of the steep mountain side. Sitting in the smoke of the camp 
fire we devoured our supper. We crawled into the little tent, drew the mosquito 
netting behind us, and slept. 


(118) 








CHAPTER XVI 


THE FOURTH DAY 


ITH dawn we leapt to action. Gone was the whole weariness of the 

night before. There, less than a mile away—for the valley narrowed 

at this point—were the pasture hillsides that we meant to reach; 

and the mere streams and bog that had deterred us now were noth- 
ing. We felled a tree that almost reached across the stream, and with dead limbs we 
bridged the rest of it. We crossed dry-shod, and, recking nothing, plunged into the 
bog. We followed different tracks and it became a joke between us who should sink 
the deeper. We wallowed, sinking deep at times and struggling out again. One 
moment I went in above my thighs: I threw my pack off and crawled out upon it. 
And we got across. 

Now the river confronted us. It was wide and deep. There was no way to bridge it 
—and we didn’t care. We were too wet—and eager. Choosing the broadest spot to 
cross it we strode in. It rose to our knees, to our thighs, to our waists—a little higher 
and the swift current would have swept us off our feet: and then it dropped. Thighs, 
knees appeared again; ankle deep we raced out through the gravelly shoals and gained 
dry land. 

In a little sheltered pasture clearing where the bars of a man-made fence were in the 
view to gladden us, we lit a fire, doffed our clothes, and hung them up to dry. 

There being no habitation in sight, it was our plan to continue down the valley in 
the knowledge that eventually it must lead us to the sea: there, or somewhere on the 
way, we counted upon finding the establishment to which these pasture lands be- 
longed. While in this conjecture we were partly wrong, such a course would, never- 
theless, have brought us more quickly to Ushuaia than that which circumstances 


(119) 


VOYAGING 


determined we should pursue. We had resumed our packs and were striding merrily 
along in beaten cattle paths upon our chosen way. Northward across from us stood 
the wooded range along whose base we had toiled. Occasional peaks lifted their high 
summits into the region of winter—but all the rest was verdant with late spring. Our 
eyes were following the curving river’s course along the valley as it appeared, was 
lost, and reappeared among the groves of trees that grew in scattered clumps along 
the shore, when suddenly emerged a moving form, a horseman galloping on the 
river bank. 

At my sudden shout he stopped and looked about as if amazed: and then he saw 
us on the pasture hillside. He turned his horse and rode a devious way to meet us. 
At last he reappeared and with astonishment upon his face rode up and greeted us. 
And when we told him whence we had come, there came into his face a wonder as 
if we had been angels dropped from heaven. We were, he told us, at an outlying camp 
of the Estancia Austral of Yendegaia Bay, on Beagle Channel, and but a little distance 
trom the head of Lapataia Bay. He told us that we were certainly the first ever to have 
crossed there from the north.* The realization that we were discoverers filled us with 
immense elation. 

He was a good-hearted, generous fellow, this Chilefio shepherd, by name Francisco; 
a great, powerful, sloppy, dirty, easy-going, easy-natured chap. His house was like a 
dog kennel, a miserable shanty of two little rooms—a filthy, dirt-floored kitchen, if 
one had a mind to call it that, and an untidy bunk room—but he made it ours with 
the gesture of one who gave us all he had. In his enthusiasm over our exploit he 
demanded that we recount it over and over again. A short, cheap road to Punta 
Arenas it meant to him, a way of escape from employers whose petty meanness, we 
were to learn, made their service a degradation. 

Francisco prevailed upon us to ride with him to the estancia, and the following 
morning was set for the trip. He appeared to contemplate a kind of showman’s pride 
in thus displaying us, and he dwelt upon the enthusiasm with which our discovery of 
the pass would be received by his patrones. Meanwhile, the day was before us; and 
after a lunch of hot milk and sour bread we mounted two horses, a mare and a geld- 
ing, and rode off upon an excursion toward Lapataia Bay. 

We had just passed out of the enclosed pasture into the open range when we were 
set upon by two stallions; and throughout the two hours of our ride this jealous, 
lustful pair furnished no end of diversion and excitement; and finally upon a naked 
hilltop, rearing aloft in locked embrace above the mountain peaks, they staged with 
thundering hoof-beats and the screams of bitten rage and pain a conflict of such 
*It is mentioned in an old missionary report from Ushuaia being unused to land travel, may have exaggerated the diffi- 
that bands of Alacaloofs, the Indians of the northern chan- culties. The remains of Indian shelters that we found would 
nels, appeared occasionally at the mission, having crossed indicate our route as being the one travelled by the Alaca- 


from Admiralty Sound. They reported great difficultieson the loofs. Our subsequent inquiries confirmed that we were the 
way, deep streams, mountains and valleys. These Indians, first white discoverers of the pass. 


(120) 





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frenzied violence and power as for magnificence of beauty one may never see surpassed. 

On the return to camp we found another guest there, one of a gang of road builders 
at work in the forest some miles away; and we found a banquet of mutton stew. We 
were in clover; and the tranquil, cloudless, golden evening was as a mirror of our 
contentment, and a prophecy, we might have thought, of the morrow’s fair-weather 
welcome to Estancia Austral. 


To begin with, while there were plenty of horses there was but one saddle, and 
this Francisco—naturally enough—took for himself. He appeared magnificently 
accoutered with a poncho to his knees and my tall painful boots, which I had given 
him, adorning his legs. A horse was provided for our packs and two for us; and in 
lieu of saddles we had a sheepskin each. And so at about ten in the morning we set 
out. We rode for hours over a good track through pasture land and forest and broad 
meadows. It appeared to be Francisco’s pleasant humor at times to test our horseman- 
ship, and where occasion offered he’d spur his horse into a mad gallop and lead the 
way over ditches and brooks, looking back the while with a devilish grin on his face. 
The mate’s unfamiliarity with the gait of a horse was more than recompensed by the 
strength of his legs. Gripping his steed with those giant forceps he became as one 


(122) 


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FROM FRANCISCO’S CAMP 


with it; and if the spectacle he furnished—leaning forward, elbows out, and flying 
coat-tails—was curious, only a formalist would criticize his horsemanship. 

Atrived at a gate some two miles from our destination, our guide told us to dis- 
mount. Removing the bridles and sheepskins from our horses, he concealed them in 
the underbrush. Then, while he kept the two unsaddled horses from the gate, we 
slipped through and closed it. He gave me his horse to ride and walked alongside. 

“That's so the patrén won't know we've used the horses,’’ he said with a grim 
laugh. But it was only when we met the patrén that we comprehended the wisdom 
of his caution. 

About us now were the developments of a prospering enterprise—cleared land, 
fences, constructed roads and substantial bridges. An extensive flat is at the head of 
Yendegaia Bay and in the midst of this stood the barns and sheds. Iwo men were 
there at work. 

“The old patrén,’’ said Francisco, recognizing one of them from a distance. 


(123) 





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CHAPTER XVII 


THE MAD ONE 


HE two men—‘‘two devils, old and crabbed,’’ reads my diary—looked up 

at our approach. One of them, beyond his comic long, red, swollen nose, is 

not remembered; the other, the patrén, was a tall powerful man of maybe 

sixty. He was rather a handsome fellow, but with an unwholesome yellow 
complexion, a hard, shrewd smile, and eyes that advertised his cunning. It was his 
nature to keep his own counsel, trust no one, and give nothing. Bezmalinovich, for 
that was his name, was a type of the Croat or Dalmatian race as they appear in South 
America. By that rascality which, operating through hard dealings, is called ability, 
and by miserly thrift in the hoarding of mean earnings, he had become in a small way 
a capitalist; and he was now the chief proprictor of the establishment whose hospi- 
tality through ill advice we sought. 

I don’t know what this fellow thought of us: whether he took us to be escaped 
convicts from Ushuaia, free-lancing desperadoes or mere vagabonds, a cynical smile 
played about his lips while we recounted the manner of our coming; and before we 
had concluded he shrugged his shoulders and walked off. 

There was nothing to do but approach him again. We told him that we had come 
there at the request of his shepherd, who believed that our information would be of 
interest to him, and that we were now upon our way to Ushuaia. At that he laughed. 

“Why, you can’t walk there!’’ he said. “‘It’s eight hours by horseback; and, 
besides, you can’t cross the river on foot.”’ 

At our suggestion that he lend us horses he shrugged his shoulders, said there were 
but three horses on the farm and that anyhow he had nothing to do with it. ““Ask the 


patron,” he said. 


(124) 


q 
4 





VOYAGING 


Don Antonio, the young patrén, to whom the elder had referred us, soon appeared. 
He was a mild young fellow with a flabby hand, a very decent kindly man at heart, 
but so pathetically under the dominance of the old devil that he couldn’t call his soul 
his own. He only repeated what the other had said about the horses—adding, how- 
ever, that we might go to the house and get some bread. 

Francisco drew a sullen face when we rejoined him with our tale, and in disgusted 
silence we rode on down to the house. 

It is possible that if our reception had been slightly less unfriendly we would not 
have stayed; certainly if it had been more so, or if we had not been fortified by the 
sympathetic fellow feeling of the Chilean subjects of this Croat kingdom, we could 
not have remained. Their gratuitous discourtesy had, however, passed into the 
ludicrous; and if subsequent affronts were disconcerting, our humor saved us from 
feeling humiliated. We accepted them and sat tight; and that buffoonery of rudeness 
became the object of our amused reflections upon the Croat character. 

Beside the two old men and Don Antonio there were of that race the cook and two 
young foremen. These, with the exception of the cook, constituted, in opposition to 
the Chilefios, of whom there were four, an aristocracy that was better quartered and 
better fed and to whom as a body the social privilege of the warm kitchen was open. 

We stayed. When mealtime came no one prevented our taking a place on the 
benches at the men’s table and helping ourselves to mutton and bread. When bed- 
time came we went unhindered into the bunk room and made our beds upon the floor. 
Several times, as if by arrangement together, the Croat lords came and requested us 
to recount the details of our journey; they invariably looked at each other and 
shrewdly smiled—and believed nothing. They addressed neither a good-morning to 
us nor a good-night—except that once Don Antonio, on returning unexpectedly to 
the house, found himself alone with us and entered with such friendliness into con- 
vetsation that it appeared as an apology. 

By far the most interesting character in the place was the cook. Juan Rompuela 
(as well as I can decipher his cramped and shaky autograph as it appears in my diary 
under the portrait I drew of him) was a man of sixty-five. I remember him chiefly by 
a few acts of the most sensitive kindness—and yet these, being contradicted by less 
tangible expressions of Croat meanness, suggested the torment that must have caused 
his malady: the cook was mad. I had caught but occasional glimpses of this strange 
person until, the supper dishes having been cleared away and the kitchen put in 
order, he came and joined the men who sat in conversation around the table. My 
pack, from which I had removed a few articles, lay in one corner of the room and 
the men, noticing my flute, had asked me to play. It must be the first rule of such 
vagabondage as we practiced to accede to every request for entertainment; and, with 
all the embarrassment of a performing schoolboy, I got out the instrument, moistened 
my wind-parched lips, and launched upon my limited repertory. 


(125) 





4 | 
x 





USHUAIA. 


VWeOW- AG TN G 


I cannot say—touching as the telling of it would appear—that at my plaintive 
notes these rough men’s souls were moved to tears; I can’t say truly that they were 
moved at all. After the first flash of novelty was over they resumed their conversation, 
but considerately, in subdued tones. The cook, however, having seated himself close 
to me, leaned forward, and with his eyes fixed upon me as if enthralled with wonder, 
listened with a profound and moved attention that communicated itself to me. His 
was a strange emaciated visage, wrinkled in a manner that betrayed rather the tor- 
turings of emotion than what is deemed character. The line was straight from the 
projecting forehead to the point of the long chin, and his red, opera-bouffe nose pro- 
jected straight out like a thing stuck on. His long, unkempt hair gave him the 
appearance of a wild man; but it was the look, the stare of impotent intensity of his 
little bulging eyes, that told his madness. 

At the first sound of the flute the old patrén appeared. It was his habit when the 
humor was upon him to join the men in gossip or at cards; and invariably at his 
appearance the jovial spirit of the gathering changed to one of constraint. And when 
with a clap upon some fellow’s back and a sardonic laugh he cracked a joke, it was 
received as dolefully as a hangman’s pun. Hearing the flute, he had entered. He stood 
for a moment staring at me with his invariable smile of inner malice; then, seating 
himself at the table opposite to me he began with deliberate offence to sing another 
tune. 

“Don’t mind him,’’ muttered the mad cook in German, drawing closer, *‘he is 
ignorant and doesn’t appreciate music.’’ 

Presently the patron retired and wine and cards appeared. It was nearly dark but the 
long twilight lingered on; and through the glassed enclosure of the sun porch where 
the gathering sat appeared the cold, stark panorama of the bay and mountains, an 
inarticulate immensity of which the heated riot of the card game seemed the heart. 
But my reflections upon the symbolism of the mountain and the candle, of the sea and 
the passion of the human spirit, upon what things are done “‘where men and moun- 
tains meet’’ were disturbed by the turn of cook-baiting that the entertainment took, 
and quite shattered by discovering that after all the picturesque Spanish playing 
cards were made in Cleveland, Ohio. 

The game broke up with the poor cook screaming with frenzy at some real or 
fancied swindling he had been the victim of. At last, still muttering his rage, he left 
the crowd to its laughter and went to bed. The rest of us soon followed. 

On entering the bunk room I found the cook just turning back the coverlet of his 
bed, which he had made up neatly and which, unlike the other bunks, was furnished 
with a pillow slip and sheets. 

“This is for you, sefior,’’ he said. 

‘But where are you going to sleep?’’ I asked him. 

‘“‘Oh—anywhere,”’ he answered, indicating the floor. 


(127) 


VOYAGING 


With the bunks all occupied, there was certainly nowhere else; so against the old 
man’s persistent entreaties I declined his sacrifice. 
It was a stinking place, that bunk room, with seven dirty men packed in it and 


the door and window shut; but I was tired, and soon the fetid, rumbling darkness of 


the squalid room passed from my consciousness. 


What was it! Out of a warmth and comfort that was oblivion to the body my mind 
emerged into a dreaming consciousness of dainty, tinkling music; and the untram- 
meled imagination wove out of these fairy strands of sound a world of timeless, 
incorporeal loveliness. Slowly that dream awakened me as I evoked the power of my 
mind to grasp and make more real the tracery of that sweet illusion. And presently, 
still lying there with eyes tight shut hearing that fairy tune in tinkling repetition, 
I recognized it as a German melody: 





Over and over it sang its simple, lovely nonsense to me. Where was I? 

I threw aside a blanket that somehow covered my face and sat bolt upright. The 
cold, grey light of dawn revealed the squalid bunk room and the muffled forms of the 
sleeping men. My mate lay beside me, his face dreadful in unconsciousness. On a 
table by the cook’s bunk stood a little clock; and the old man whose hour for getting 
up it sounded lay there with his strange mad eyes fixed upon me. 

Although everyone affirmed that the river at Lapataia was not to be crossed on 
foot it had, thanks to the unscrupulous friendship of Francisco, become immaterial 
to us whether or not the patrén granted us horses. And on horseback we were to go— 
that roguery was arranged, carefully planned and agreed upon between our friend and 
us. It may be that the assurance which this independent arrangement lent to our 
demeanor worked subtly upon the prejudices of our hosts, or that they were impressed 
by the mate’s eloquence in praise of mé; they wavered and then changed their minds. 

“The sefior is,’’ I heard the mate telling them the day after our arrival, as I sat by in 
feigned indifference, ‘‘a very great man, and much in the confidence of the President 
of the United States, of whom he is a close relation. He is also an intimate friend of 
the President of Chile.”’ 

And so he prated on until at last the patrones, after drawing apart for consultation, 
announced that we were to be taken on horseback across the river, and then left to 


(128 ) 





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YENDEGAIA BAY 


continue to Ushuaia as we pleased. ‘Very good,’’ we said; and, it suiting their con- 
venience, we set out again on the following morning, December third. 

‘Good-bye Francisco, good-bye poor, crack-brained cook, good-bye young Don 
Antonio, and may the sweetness in you somehow flower despite the blighting mean- 
ness of the Croat soul.’’ We splashed through the sparkling shallows of the bay; the 
bright sun warmed us, the west wind swept the two days’ dust of memory from our 
spirits. God, it was beautiful to be released again and on our way! 


Near the mouth of the bay we turned inland and rode for hours through the forest 
on a beaten track and then, near noon, we reached the river. We laughed that they 
had said we couldn’t cross it! Not waist deep it flowed over a broad gravel bed 
between firm banks. 

Some distance beyond the ford at a turn of the winding river stood the buildings 
of an abandoned lumber mill. Here we stopped for lunch. And here, after filling 


(129) 


VOYAGING 


our bellies to contentment, we parted from the friendly Chilefio who had been our 
uide. 

s The trail to Ushuaia was well travelled and not difficult to follow. With our packs 

again upon our shoulders we set off blithely: ten miles it scaled on the map. Allowing, 

we thought, two more for devious winding of the way, we should get there—it being 

now one o’clock—by five. 

We strode along through interminable miles of forest that revealed no climes 
beyond it but of high peaks and far descending wooded slopes. Finally, when the 
shut-in monotony most seemed to promise no relief of change, we cate, to our aston- 
ishment, upon a railroad track, and, following this down the steep grade, emerged 
upon the shore of Beagle Channel. 

Here in a field of the greenest grass that I had seen since leaving North America 
stood a little bright red cabin. It was strange thus to come at last upon that shore 
that had lived for me through Darwin's pages as a forbidding wilderness. And yet 
from that tiny verdant spot of cultivation we beheld across the channel the lofty 
mountains of Hoste Island, and its shores unchanged since ninety years ago the 
Beagle’s men explored them. 

The little cabin was untenanted, and since it appeared to promise that we were near 
to Ushuaia—just around the hill we thought !—I doffed my disreputable clothes and 
attired myself in the rather shabby “‘best suit’’ that my pack contained, adorning my 
flannel shirt with a necktie. 

Nothing, of course, is more dispiriting than the postponement of what the heart 
is set upon, and no hearts can have yearned more poignantly for a fulfillment than 
ours—that weary last day of our journeying afoot—for the haven of Ushuaia. Not 
one hill did we round to bring the town to our view but twenty; and as we toiled on 
hours more with the hope that every hill and turn would be the last, to find ourselves 
again confronted with interminable pasture lands, disheartenment weighed like an 
added burden upon us. 

There was not one trail but a thousand sheep-worn paths threading their aimless 
way between the clumps of califata; so even our immediate way was winding, and 
what the meandering miles of the shore added to the journey is only recorded by the 
too frequent milestones that our weariness bestowed. 

We had almost despaired of reaching port that night, when, on attaining another 
‘‘last’’ hilltop, we sighted far away the long peninsula of Ushuaia, a treeless golden 
neck of land lying, as it seemed, upon the blue surface of the bay. How then, with 
new courage, we hurried on to cross the many intervening miles before the darkness 
came is but a story of growing tiredness and frequent rests. We were footsore; and 
the mate’s lameness that the two days’ rest had profited now returned and pained him 
almost beyond endurance. 

There still were many hills to climb and a deep stream to cross before, just as the 


(130) 





VOYAGING 


finger shadows of the mountain peaks reached out to dim its glory, our eyes beheld 
the glistening roofs and towers of the town. 

Westward of Ushuaia is a broad plain where once, a mile away, the English Mis- 
sion stood. Twilight descended as we crossed it. The mate was spent with pain. 

“Let's rest a bit,’’ he said as we reached the outskirts of the town, ‘‘because we’ve 
got to blow in in style.”’ 

In a few minutes he could stand it. With heads thrown back and swinging arms, 
to our marching tune of ‘John Brown’s Body”’ we tramped in. 

The dogs announce our coming, folk come to their doors and stare. 

“Where are you from?”’ asks a fellow. 

“Admiralty Sound.”’ 

“God! Where are you going?”’ 

“CAPE HORN!’ 


(131) 


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CHAPTER XVIII 


USHUAIA 


T the head of a beautiful little bay that opens upon Beagle Channel, isolated 
by an almost impassable wilderness of mountains from all land commu- 
nication with the world, stands the town of Ushuaia with its population 
of some hundreds or a thousand souls, the farthest southern “‘city’’ of the 

world. Overshadowing the town, by its organic importance in the life of the commu- 
nity if not by the vastness of its stone and concrete walls, stands the penitentiary; and 
from the barred windows of that prison a thousand men look out, during the months 
or years or lifetimes of their confinement, over the grey, cold, wind-swept waters of 
the south, or past a desolation of tin roofs and fire-devastated hills, at mountain bar- 
riers more terrible than prison walls. Yet the austerity of the visible world, far from 
imposing its gloom upon the inmates of the prison and the town, makes the security 
of their confinement and their small comforts appear as blessings wrung from the vast 
and pitiless desolation of the encompassing universe. Ushuaia, because of its isolation, 
is a cheerful, friendly place, where the townfolks’ simple lives are just as full of 
gaiety as those of some great capital, and, one may venture, just as barren of real 
happiness; and where the care-free convicts walk the streets about their work in 
scarcely guarded freedom. | 

Into this town we two had tramped, ragged, dirty and tired, with all the goods we 
owned upon our backs and nothing in our pockets. And had the people, after staring 
and smiling at our grotesque appearance, decided to lock us up for mad it would have 
been less to wonder at than that on perceiving our madness they somehow caught its 
spirit from us. And when to all who questioned us as to our purpose we replied “‘Cape 
Horn,”’ they answered *‘Crazy! but good for you!”’ 


(132) 





VOYAGING 


Most fortuitous of all was our immediate and open-hearted welcome into the house 
of Martin Lawrence, who, as the first citizen of the town, at once in point of time and 
wealth and the deserved high character he bore, by his friendship established our 
respectability in the public eye and opened the way to all that friendship and credit 
that was forthcoming to advance our purpose. 

Yet still Cape Horn remained not only a purpose to which by our soul’s desire and 
our outward boastfulness we stood committed, but a problem so difficult of solution 
that it occupied our minds to the exclusion of every other thought. That Ultima 
Thule of mariners is not, most readers must be told, the southermost point of the 
continent of South America, nor of Tierra del Fuego, nor even of some great island 
nearly adjacent to it. It is the southmost point of a small rocky island of a forlorn and 
isolated group, the Wollastons, and lies, scaled in a straight line, about seventy-five 
miles southeasterly from Ushuaia. We did not propose, having adventured thus far, to 
content ourselves with standing on the limit of the shore to gaze off seaward—and 
yet for that we were completely and exclusively equipped. Yet we could pace that 
long water front and look at the varied craft that lay at anchor in the harbor and 
discuss which one could serve our purpose best. 

There was a tall-masted schooner of American build, a fine-lined vessel of that 
queenly type that is supreme in its class over everything that sails the seas: she was 
too big for us to dream of chartering. There was a smaller schooner, a clumsy, service- 
able craft: she was provisioning for a sailing voyage. And there was Lawrence’s big 
sloop, the Garibaldi, but she was constantly employed in traffic on the coast. One 
other boat was there, a smaller sloop of about ten tons: she was of the very size we 
wanted, and she was idle. Upon somehow acquiring her we set our hearts. And that 
we might in our poverty as well have coveted the yacht of an emperor never, in our 
fatuous and unreflecting eagerness, occurred to us. 

The owner of that much desired craft was one Fortunato Beban, a Croat, a prosper- 
ous and enterprising merchant of the place—as prosperity and enterprise were meas- 
ured there. Incompany with Martin Lawrence I sought him out. He was a tall, spare 
man of sixty-five, of forceful and distinguished appearance. His face was tanned and 
weather-beaten and from the shadow of his yachting cap his pale, blue eyes gleamed 
with the shrewdness of a New Englander. Beban heard my story and considered. Yes, 
he would rent the boat; the terms he'd have to think about. And although the inter- 
view had been friendly enough my heart sank. 

We had to wait; and with the excuse that Beban’s procrastinations afforded I re- 
signed myself to the enjoyment again of such delicious refinements of civilization as 
clean sheets and comfortable chairs and dainty food, and above all the society of the 
Lawrence household. 

How pleasantly they live in Ushuaia! At evening we would stroll, my host and I, 
along the hilly streets up to the outskirts of the town and in the silence that the hour 


(133) 


VOYAGING 


imposed, look over the broad bay and channel to the hills of Navarin and the white 
mountains of Hoste Island. Then at twilight, while the massed clouds hung still 
flaming over the darkening steel-blue mountain peaks, we'd enter some quiet, com- 
fortable drinking place and sit conversing for an hour. And Lawrence opened up the 
past and told me something of his boyhood there in Ooshooia where, in years before 
the town was built, the flag of England waved above the little mission. He spoke 
without illusion for, born of missionary parents, the second white child of Tierra del 
Fuego, he knew the harsh privations of the early missionary’s life and understood 
the sordid humbug of it. Yet his words recalled the fact that the savages had once in 
thousands peopled those shores that now, thanks chiefly to the pestilence of Chris- 
tian mercy, were and would forever be a solitude.* 

Those days of idleness, of waiting for that mind of Beban, ponderous with craft, to 
form its pronunciamento, brought me some memorable acquaintances. The house of 
Don Julio, the barber, whom I early sought, was one of the most attractive and pre- 
tentious in the town. It stood upon a little hill and overlooked the bay. I mounted 
the imposing stairway at the front and rang the bell. A little man of maybe fifty, 
pallid, sensitive, with large mournful eyes, opened the door—Don Julio. He greeted 
me with the sweetest courtesy, and, conversing in French, explained that he had 
been at work in his garden when the bell had rung. His house, in which he lived 
alone, was beautifully neat and revealed in the little conveniences for housekeeping 
of the owner’s contrivance, in the hideous collection of pictures and souvenirs dis- 
posed so lovingly about, an active personal attachment to the place that made its 
ugliness delightful. 

But his own bedroom was one of the world’s great wonders. An ornate double bed- 
stead, a miracle in lacquered brass, stood in the central space; an ancient counterpane of 
yellow satin, wrought in silk and gold with twining morning-glory vines, covered 
the bed. Over the lace-edged pillow slips were pinned embroidered satin shams, and 
shadowing these hung velvet curtains from a gilded canopy. Upon the flower-papered 
walls hung, pitching forward, gilt-framed colored pictures of the love and hate 
scenes from Italian opera. On stands and scroll-work bracket-shelves wonders of 
porcelain and painted shell rivalled the splendour of the festooned tidies that they 


for a walk, under guard. Mr. Bridges’ report in 1883 for a | 
period of three and a half years shows that 38 children were 


*A census of the Fuegian Indians compiled in 1883 by the 
Rev. Thomas Bridges, fifteen years after his establishment in 


Ushuaia as the first resident missionary, is as follows: Yah- 
gans, 273 men, 314 women, 358 children; Onas, not more than 
500; Alacaloofs, not more than 1,500; total Fugiana, about 
3,000. Ten years earlier, he estimates, the number must have 
been double. It was a part of the missionary program to segre- 
grate the little Yahgan girls in what were called ‘‘Orphan 
Homes.’’ The Orphan Home at Ushuaia was a small cabin. 
The children were packed eight in one room; the window was 
kept shut; there was no fire. Every day the inmates were taken 


(134) 


taken care of during that time. Of these, 18 are listed as hav- 
ing died of tuberculosis, 15 are not accounted for, § are re- 
corded as living. The missionary remarks in his report that 
he experiences some difficulty in persuading the mothers to 
part with their children, as they fear that they will never see 
them again. Forty years have passed. Mr. Martin Lawrence, 
of Remilino, estimates the surviving Yahgan population at 
60 souls. Mr. William Bridges allows the Onas 56 men and 
boys, 57 women and girls, 50 little children, 16 half-breeds. 





VOYAGING 


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stood upon. A crimson-flowered carpet was on the floor, and crimson, gold-edged 
portieres darkened the still too garish daylight of the lace-curtained window. 

“It’s wonderful!’’ I whispered. And going to the window drew the lace aside and 
looked out at the world. It was blue daylight, hard and clear; over a few tin roofs 
stood the concrete walls of the prison; beyond this rose high into the sky the knife- 
edged mountain ranges. 

Don Julio’s bedchamber! I peeped into a tiny room or passageway just off the 
kitchen. There was a narrow iron cot neatly made up, one wooden chair with a shirt 
and trousers hung over it, nothing more. And here he slept. 

Don Julio tied an apron around my neck, put the Barcarolle from ‘‘Tales of Hoff- 
mann”’ on the phonograph, and cut my hair—beautifully. Then he poured me a glass 
of Benedictine and himself a drop of it for courtesy, proposed ‘‘Cape Horn—and 
back!’’ and we drank. 

“Wait a moment, if you please,’’ he said at parting—and ran into the garden. 

He brought mea little bunch of forget-me-nots; and, with these quite foolishly in 
my hand, I strode out and down the street of the real world. 

A town is but the home of men and women, and its spirit can only be read in the 


(135) 


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lives of those that dwell there. Ushuaia is the resting place of a restless wanderer, 
Don Julio. His house is the treasury of his memories of the greater world he came 
from, of love and art, of pride and hope and failure. That state bedchamber is to 
him the symbol of the pomp he dreamed of and that might have been. Don Julio 
dusts its grandeur reverently, closes the door—and goes to weep upon his narrow, 
solitary bed. 

Ushuaia is Fortunato Beban, hard and shrewd, making a little fortune for his heirs 
to spend. It is Martin Lawrence, cultured, intelligent and cautious—a stabilizer; 
Ushuaia is old Mr. Feeque who came there forty years ago to found the town. 

This old man, a lean and feeble invalid, with the gentle face of one for whom the 
passion and activities of life are past, sits forever, deep in a tall-backed upholstered 
armchair, in a great room encumbered with a huge walnut double bed and a con- 
glomeration of furniture, unwashed dishes, chamber pots, Catholic symbols, and 
lithograph portraits of the crucified Christ. Gently and very slowly the old man 
speaks, in cultured English; and his voice becomes at times so faint that one must sit 
at strained attention. And there is in his manner and appearance a beautiful and 
touching dignity, and in his speech the sadness of great wisdom. 


(136) 








VOYAGING 


I bore credentials which I offered him. ‘‘I do not need to see these,’’ he said—and 
I was ashamed. | 

He loves his country, Tierra del Fuego, and has faith in its development; and he 
looks back upon past times of helpfulness to younger enterprisers in that land as on 
a life well spent in the service of a cause. 

We drank coffee and cognac together. “‘Beban—’’ he shook his head. *‘Lundberg at 
Harberton,’’ he counselled me, *‘is your man for the Horn: and if that fails get Indians 
and a canoe. It can be done that way if you must do it.”’ 

It being considered desirable by Mr. Feeque that I should pay my respects to the 
acting governor of the territory, I proceeded thither on the following morning in the 
conduct of Mr. Feeque’s son. Whether the young man became conscious of my 
shabby appearance, or had mere natural tremors on approaching the great, when we 
had passed the outer sentries and were entering the vestibule he turned to me nerv- 
ously and asked if I had my credentials with me. On being told that I had not he 
showed a sudden panic and a disposition to flee while there yet was time. But, not to 
be deterred, I drew him along with me; and a moment later we found ourselves seated 
in what is termed, I suppose, the audience chamber—a large crimson-carpeted room 
with ponderous hangings at the great windows. 

The acting governor was a young man of pleasing manner who affected slightly 
and quite becomingly the indispensable inflation of his rank. Fortunately he was 
accompanied by a German secretary, by whose able interpretation we were enabled 

to converse fluently. 

The art of conversation between persons of unequal rank is, of the whole histrionic 
att of conversation, the least difficult; and in direct ratio to the difference in rank it 
approaches the elemental facility of the burlesque, becoming in fact such a travesty 
in mock heroics as every mind must delight in as a release from the toil of sincere 
utterance. After an exchange of compliments, I proceeded at once to the business that 
weighed upon me. I sketched briefly the advantages that would be reaped by the 
Republic of Argentina from my published disclosures of the truly mild and equable 
nature of the climate of Tierra del Fuego; I hinted that American capital, freed from 
a deterrent dread of this maligned region, would stampede into a development of its 
resources; and I suggested as not impossible—and, though God forbid it, it isn’t— 

_ that summer hotels for tourists would some day be erected among the Alpine splen- 
dours of these mountains. 

“T would have asked you,’’ I concluded, “‘to put at my disposal any battleship, 
cruiser, or transport that had been stationed here—had any been.”’ 

The governor replied—and with entire sincerity, I believe, so great is the courtesy 
of South Americans—that were any government vessel now in those waters it would 
certainly be placed at my service; and although he was at that moment powerless to 
be of assistance to me I might count upon him to do everything that lay within his 


(137) 


VOYAGING 


authority to further my noble aims. ‘‘But,’’ he added—and herein was evidence of the 
isolation of Ushuaia, ‘‘my government is very neglectful of us here. As an example, 
we were last winter seven months without communication with the north: during 
this time all government salaries remained unpaid; the prison and the town ran short 
of food supplies and tobacco, and, even worse than that—for it was a menace to the 
security of the people—the many convicts whose terms expired during those months 
were of necessity released upon the town without either money or means of support.”’ 

Thus ended my audience—to the satisfaction of all of us and the relief and pride 
of young Mr. Feeque, who had been profoundly impressed. 

Beban, meanwhile, “‘considered’’; and I waited. My mate lay on his back with a 
foot so swollen he could hardly stand on it; yet all the time his only worry was our 
problem of a boat. Lundberg, at Harberton, was forty miles away on Beagle Channel. 
We were growing desperate. 

An old timer, who had searched the shores of all the islands to the south for gold, 
said one day, “‘I’ll take you in a dory to the Horn.”’ 

““Good!’’ I cried with sudden hope. 

He laughed. ‘Not on your life!’’ he said. 

Despairing of getting a reply from Beban I had set a day to cross in a small boat of 
Feeque’s to Navarin in search of Indians—it seemed the only thing to do—when, in 
the stillness of the early morning, I heard the chugging of a motor in the bay. A little 
sloop came in and tied up at the mole. And it was Lundberg! 


(138) 





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CHAPT HR OLS 


UNDBERG came walking up the street. He was tall and lean and moved 
with nervous energy. Somehow, from far away, I knew the man and con- 
fidently hurried on to meet him. He was a Swede, forty, hollow-cheeked and 
tanned. His intent blue eyes showed the energy of his mind and its power of 

concentration. He spoke English fluently with an unusual and distinguished vocabu- 
lary. His pronunciation of words as they are spelt betrayed the self-educated man. 
Here was the pioneer who opens up new lands for human enterprise. Lundberg was a 
prospector, a lumberman, a business man, an organizer, a man of restless practical 
imagination. He knew the United States from Minnesota to California and Alaska, 
he had given years to a co-operative experiment in the jungles of Paraguay. His life 
had been one of fruitless accomplishment; and he stood now, at middle age, on the 
last frontier of the inhabited world, with nothing but a little five-ton boat, a tim- 
ber concession, a devoted wife and four flaxen-haired children, good credit, and the 
respect of every man that knew him. 

We had moved together to a public house and sat conversing over our drinks. 
““Well,’’ he said after a long pause when I had finished my impassioned plea,‘‘if you 
can get Beban’s boat, do—and I'll stand credit for you. If you can’t, I'll take you.”’ 

By a strange chance Lawrence came up at that moment seeking me. 

“I have Beban’s answer,’’ he said with a sick grin. ‘Five hundred American 
dollars for the first ten days or less, and fifty dollars a day after that.”’ 

‘That settles it,’’ said Lundberg. 

‘*And if we lose your boat,’’ I said, as quickly as he had spoken, “‘I’ll give you 
mine that’s now in Admiralty Sound.’ 


(139) 


VOYAGING 


“Tf we lose mine,’’ answered Lundberg solemnly, ‘‘no one of us will ever need 
another.”’ 

The only drawback to this fortunate solution of the problem of the means for 
getting to the Horn was that Lundberg was not prepared to start with us at once. 
His plans necessitated a delay of several days, and that, with my allotted time in 
South America drawing near its end, was exasperating enough. Yet could we have 
foreseen that the days of delay would on one pretext or another be lengthened to 
weeks we must at once with the discovery of his generosity have declined it. But, 
that being unknown, it was with wild elation that I returned to my bedridden mate 
and communicated the event to him. 

It was with wild elation, too, that he weighed and got upon his feet, and in full 
sail of happiness bore out through the town. And that, “‘carrying on,”’ he that day 
foundered over the deal table of a grog shop was at once to the credit of his consistent 
recklessness and almost the undoing of us both in that fold of respectability which 
had sheltered us. 

It was both natural and proper that Lundberg, after an excursion for logs to Lapa- 
taia Bay, should desire to visit and say adieu to his family at Harberton before start- 
ing with us on that ‘‘suicidal’’ voyage southward. And, in order to see more of that 
country, to relieve the kind Lawrences of the burden of supporting us and of the mate’s 
now somewhat discreditable presence there, and especially to keep very close to that 
skipper upon whose humor we were now depending, we prepared to accompany 
Lundberg. 

The crew of Lundberg’s sloop consisted of a Finn named Johanson, of whom, since 
my hasty impatience with him at another time resulted in his death, more will be 
said. Besides Johanson, Lundberg had with him on this trip an Argentine lumber- 
jack, a temperamentally worthless fellow, who had or had not, it was said, served 
a term for manslaughter. Both of them now appeared at the boat too drunk to be of 
any assistance in loading. At the moment of sailing the men were helped aboard: 
Johanson was stowed in the cabin, and the Argentine was propped up forward on 
deck against the mast where the fresh air might benefit him, and where he continued 
almost throughout the trip in utter silence and with an expression of forlorn and 
sullen dejection on his face. 

Johanson was a far more entertaining drunkard. He was'riotously talkative, wav- 
ing his arms about as he conversed passionately in a debased German. “‘Ja, ja, ja!’ he 
cried at last in exasperation, mimicking the only answer I could make to his incoher- 
ence; ‘‘Warum sags’t Du immer ja!’’ And the humor of that delighted him for hours. 

It was unavoidable that Johanson, who sat at the companionway, should share 
occasionally in the potions of gulls’ eggs and cagna (a raw white Argentine brandy) 
in which the rest of us indulged from time to time; but that besides this he visited a 
jug of wine, when he periodically crawled forward, we didn’t discover until the 


(140) 


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VOTYeAG ING 


following day. Albeit he kept in the highest spirits, varying the diversion of conver- 
sation with now and then stopping the engine or climbing up on deck to struggle 
with the steersman, whichever one of us it might be, for the possession of the tiller. 
But each time we'd promptly push him down below—which he accepted in perfect 
good humor. 

I had produced my flute and stood half out of the companionway playing it. At 
this Johanson pushed himself up beside me and stood with his broad good-natured 
face quite close to mine and stared at me with a curious solemnity. 

‘‘Many of us,’’ he said after a long time, “‘can see beautiful things and want to 
make music; but we can’t do anything about it. I would give anything in the world 
to play that flute.”’ 

Of Lundberg’s boat more will be said at another and more impressive time. It is 
enough to say that on this rough day she sailed abominably and took more water on 
the deck than the Kathleen would have taken in a week. But there was intermittent 
power in the engine and, having left Ushuaia about noon, we entered the narrow pas- 
sage north of Gable Island just as darkness closed about us. 

To this point the shore of Beagle Channel had been mountainous with only in the 
vicinity of Remilino any land of comparative flatness. From Gable Island onward, 
however, both the island and the mainland were open rolling pasture land with sand 
banks fronting on the shore. These were the sheep lands of the Bridges’ estancia, to 
the headquarters of which, at Harberton, we were bound. 

It approached midnight when we were but midway through the narrow winding 
channel, and it was suggested by Lundberg and approved by all of us that we lie out 
the night at a camp on Gable Island that was at present being occupied by Mrs. Niel- 
sen, the wife of the Harberton manager, and several of the children. Coming to 
anchor ina little cove we left the sloop in the hands of the two inebriates and them in 
the hands of God, and rowed to shore, where, above the low sky line of the land, 
loomed the dark shapes of a group of buildings. 

We had landed and were approaching the most removed of the buildings, a little 
house that stood some distance up the hill, when we were hailed from the obscurity 
of the doorway by a boy’s voice, as cheerfully as if no visitors could come, however 
late, unseasonably. It was but a minute later that I stood within the house at the 
doorway of a dark room and was presented by Lundberg to the invisible mistress of 
the place. And the sweet and girlish voice that greeted me out of the darkness is 
invested in my memory now with the aura of a mystic communication of that youth- 
ful happiness that was to irradiate the lives of all of us throughout the weeks that 
we were guests at Harberton. 


(142) 


eo |) a eee Lae een eee ae eee ee 








CHAPTER XX 


ARCADIA 


T was a blue day, a springlike, sunny, happy day, when we set sail with all of 
them on board for Harberton, and the gaiety of a holiday excursion attended 
our progress over the calm blue water. We stopped at a small hummock island 
and went ashore to gather gulls’ eggs in the grass, scattering in every direction in 

the eager, laughing competition. Then with laden pails we embarked again. Soon the 
harbor mouth was reached, soon came the house into view; ah, it was good to reach 
that shore! And yet how vastly deeper now would my emotion be, how poignant as 
at the dearest home-coming, if destiny should ever lead me to that spot again! 

For now at Harberton we entered on such happy weeks as might have held Odysseus 
longer than ten years from home. Yet about those unpretentious grounds and build- 
ings there was little—beside the fair exception of the terraced flower garden—to sug- 
gest to the eye the comforts and the pleasures that we found there. The boxlike 
buildings in their garish red and yellow paint were plainly ugly save that they had 
the grace of fitness for the thing they were. The surrounding meadows and pastures 
had but the mild beauty of a cultivated rolling country. True, such quiet scenes pos- 
sess a tranquillity which is a moral quality akin to beauty and that is perhaps more 
enduringly contenting to the spirit; yet, Harberton, even with the blue sea almost 
encircling it and lofty mountains bordering the inland plain, was in no way compa- 
table to the prodigious splendours that characterize that southern land. One quality 
it did possess that next to the pervading spirit of the warm and joyous hearts it shel- 
tered gave it character, that was tradition. 

Harberton was the first practical and permanent result of English missionary 
activities among the Yahgan natives. Granted as a freehold to Thomas Bridges, the 


(143) 


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first and last superintendent of the mission at Ushuaia, it became for him an immedi- 
ate stepping-stone from godliness to wealth. And, although his enterprising sons 
soon blazed their way across the mountains into the more fertile prairies of the north, 
the house at Harberton still displays in its plans and furnishings the Victorian 
middle-class comfort that dignified its golden days. 

Through my stay at Harberton I came, by the observation of numerous memorials 
of the past that it contained, and by a reading of the tragedy that without words was 
written in the solitary love-bedecked grave that lay within a grove nearby, to have 
some understanding of the lives that had been spent in making it, and to havea little 
insight into the sorrow of loneliness that attends such isolation. 

But all that sorrow appeared closed and ended with the musty past. It was written 
in the fading photographs of hard-handed sons of the frontier lugubriously posing in 
the imported attire of dandies against the background of the wilderness, in the faces 
of the sad-eyed women at their side, women that the wilderness had never bred, 
whom—all but their yearnings—it could only strangle. The tragedy that spoke in 
their forlorn pretentions to gentility was as the affliction of another world, as it was 
indeed of a generation gone. Today at Harberton was joyous with young life; and in 
the contemplation of that, in mingling with it and partaking of its spirit, one felt 
that here was the very abode of contentment, that here in reality in this last place was 
happiness. 

My recollection of those weeks at Harberton is of days continually fair—fresh, 
sweet, cool, summer days when sitting on a hillside in the sun yielded the content- 
ment of a fireside; and nights where in the serene inclosure of four walls the warm 
hearth and the astral bodies of ourselves became a solar cosmos more intimately 
friendly and no less vast than the cold immensity of out of doors. 

My memory is of days on horseback, scouring the miles of rolling open pasture 
land, along shores heaped with the grass-grown mounds of shells that mark a thou- 
sand transient camps of vanished generations of the vanished Yahgans, on paths 
through the tall dark forest, across broad streams and inlets of the sea, following 
deep, thundering gorges of the river—to emerge at last into the peacefulness of some 
sheltered pond or lake—over and through this Paradise, day following day, we'd 
ride. Some days we'd picnic in the woods, choosing a sunlit clearing sheltered from 
the wind, and over a great fire we would roast a quartered sheep, and feed the crowd 
of happy children and ourselves; and then play children’s games for hours on end. 

The days went by like hours. On one pretext or another Lundberg put off sailing 
with us to the Horn until after Christmas. Meanwhile, to lay in stores and presents 
for the festival, we went on a trip to Ushuaia, my mate and I, with Lundberg and 
Johanson. Starting at noon we made Remilino at supper time and, being welcomed 
there, we stayed the night. 

The pasture lands of Remilino are not comparable to those of Harberton and con- 


(145) 


VOYAGING 


sequently that estancia, although nearly as old a foundation, is, while undoubtedly 
a very efficient, certainly a less pretentious establishment. It is a Lawrence freehold 
and is operated by the brothers of Martin, to whose generosity we were indebted. It 
was a privilege there to meet old Mr. Lawrence who with the Reverend Thomas 
Bridges had been one of the founders of the Anglican mission at Ushuaia in the year 
1869. In the presence of this gentle old man, whose experience of the mission’s failure, 
if it had brought some understanding of the futility of such a Christianizing enter- 
prise, had in no way dimmed his simple Christian faith, one felt above one’s condem- 
nation of all murderous good intent a reverence for the kind, brave spirit that had 
burned in some of those blind saviors. 

Then too at Remilino one could observe the effect that “‘civilization’’ had upon the 
natives. In a row of cabins that stood adjacent to the house lived several families of 
Yahgans who were employed on the farm. Yet the occupying of white men’s shelters 
appeared to have effected little or no important change in the manner of their lives. 
They lived in their cabins as they had lived in their own wigwams. And even an ele- 
vation by marriage to the white man’s state and rank, as was also to be met with 
there, seemed but the unkind uprooting of a spirit from that native soil from which 
it drank its happiness. We do believe, who have heard the notes of the wood thrush 
on some mountain side at evening, that in the music of the voice lies the soul’s utter- 
ance. On rising in the morning at Remilino I stood a long time in the kitchen passage 
and listened to the low, sweet tones of the Yahgan women in laughing conversation 
at their work. 3 

On arriving at Ushuaia that morning we went at once about our various commis- 
sions, I, for my part, making such purchases as I pleased on Lundberg’s credit: before 
noon we were ready to sail. Johanson however, having received his wages, had 
browsed off somewhere and was not to be found. There was no doubt about the con- 
dition he would be in when we should locate him, so, after wasting half an hour’s 
time in search, I impatiently urged Lundberg to leave him behind. This he reluctantly 
consented to do; and, tying up his effects, we deposited them at Lawrence's store. 
We wete never again to see Johanson. 

Of his end this is the story as it is known: after consuming his money in a grand 
debauch he set out on foot for Harberton to rejoin Lundberg there; he reached Remi- 
lino in shaky condition, a sick man. The following morning, still very groggy, he 
continued on his way. It was some days later when a man from Remilino passing 
through Harberton informed us of this. Johanson meanwhile had not appeared, and 
he was never heard of again. 

There was no concern whatever about this disappearance of a man. He was no 
good, he was gone—and that was an end of it. My mate spent a day on horseback in 
search of him, but on that precipitous wild trail it was quite futile. 

Meanwhile Christmas drawing near we were occupied with preparations for its 


(146) 


OT eae eee 


i 


— 


—- 





THE HOUSE AT HARBERTON 


VOYAGING 





Snaden brin — 
gende Weih- 


nachts zeit 


v 


\ 
" y 
Ri PUAN 


—————— eee 





celebration. In the carpenter shop, behind locked doors, two of us were busily con- 
triving gaudy wonders for the tree; gilded nuts, and cakes and candy wrapped in tin 
foil saved from cigarettes, and tinsel made of shavings of sheet lead, and to crown all 
a gteat star of Bethlehem with copper wire rays. The mate was set to dipping little 
tallow candles and hanging them to cool. The children gathered daisies in the fields 
and roses in the garden, and flowering boughs and mistletoe; they decked the house 
as for a May-day festival. And on the last day the youngsters came trooping from the 
forest with the tree, a glossy-leafed canelo, first of its kind that should attain the 
glory of a candle-lighted Christmas martyrdom. 


It is Christmas Eve and a great party is assembled at the Neilsen house. Besides the 
Neilsens and Lundbergs with their eleven children, Bert Lawrence has come from 
Remilino with two more children. There are in all eight grown-ups and thirteen 
youngsters. Profound expectancy possesses them all, for the doors of the great state 
dining room that is seldom used are locked upon a mystery, and the windows are 
darkly curtained against the lingering daylight and the eager curiosity of little eyes. 
Waiting, whispering, wondering at the doors, suddenly there is silence there as from 
the closed room comes the sound of music—far away at first, and faint but heavenly 
sweet. ‘‘Fréliche Nacht’ :—an orchestra is playing! 

The great door swings slowly back and swells the sound into a burst of glory: but 


(148) 





VOYAGING 


the light! the glistening, dazzling marvel of that tree revealed to eyes that never saw 
a Christmas tree before! Those that have done it feel the spirit of the children’s happi- 
ness; and the rude music mounts to fervent utterance of their speechless wonderment. 
—Yet what an orchestra it was! two boys with fiddles, and the phonograph and 
flute—a band in tune with homemade tinsel and candles made of grocery string and 
tallow, but, like those homemade splendours, perfect there and then. 

Then with eating and drinking, with dancing and laughter and play, the night 
glides by; and as the little children fall asleep weary with happiness, and the dusk of 
midnight brightens into dawn, we older people, mellowed by the wine and kept 
awake with happiness, contentedly converse into the rising day. The cock crows and 
_ the red sun rises through haze. We stroll into the garden and with the sweet air of 
early morning breathe the fragrance of the roses. 

“Never, ’ says Neilsen, ‘‘in the twenty-six years that I’ve been in this country have 
I known such a Christmas.”’ 


Lundberg’s reasons for delay were without end; and their elusiveness somehow 
detracted nothing from their plausibility. Our sailing appeared now to hang upon 
the arrival of an Argentine transport, the Rio Negro, on which he was shipping logs 
to Buenos Ayres; but the date set for that ship’s arrival vacillated tantalizingly 
over a period of weeks. Nevertheless, while cursing inwardly at fate, we made the 
most of the festivities of New Year’s eve and of the Kingpin Punch that, out of an 
instructive resourcefulness bred of the suppression of home, I originated—to the vast 
credit of America and the second and almost fatal undoing of the mate. 


KINGPIN PUNCH 


Into a five-gallon kerosene tin, well scoured, of course, put all the raisins, prunes, currants, figs and 
stuff of that sort that you can find in the larder; add to this some hops, if you have any—just a few; 
ten pounds or so of sugar and a little sour dough—or yeast. Pour on hot water and mash. Fill with 
warm water and stand behind stove. In two days it will murmur gently, in four days it will growl. 
Abstain from tasting until the tenth day, which should be New Year’s eve. Unleash and serve. 


In the morning I discovered that the mate had not slept in his bed, and on coming 
down I found the family in a tragic mood over an occurrence of the night, of which 
I had known nothing. While the mate still slept where Neilsen in his wrath had 

hurled him, his case was tried. It hung on the decision whether or not his unconsci- 
ousness, as he lay ina heap where he had fallen at the door of a room that was not his 
own, was teal or feigned. I knew the mate too well to have the slightest doubt and 
defended him as well as I was able on the plea of innocently bestial drunkenness; but 
the issue lay with him, and going to where he lay I wakened him, and to his emerg- 
ing consciousness delivered my mind: 

“You are no worse than an utter damned fool without a shred of character. Go 


(149) 


VOYAGING 


down and talk to Mr. Neilsen, and either clear yourself with him or get out of the 
house and live on the boat.”’ 

Thanks chiefly to the understanding sympathy of Mrs. Neilsen, a reconciliation 
was effected and the mate continued, in diminished favor, under that hospitable roof. 

To reinstate my discredited mate in the readers’ hearts I shall narrate a brighter 
incident that occurred during these last days at Harberton and one in which his very 
countenance of brutishness shall delight the mind. For some weeks it had been 
rumored that a great steamer laden with sightseers was on its way from Buenos 
Ayres to tour the channels of Tierra del Fuego. And one day, lo and behold! the ship 
appeared off Harberton itself and anchored in the channel. Wild excitement reigned 
among us. Mr. Neilsen and Lundberg being absent from the house I was requested to 
do the honors of host to the multitudes that landed. There were hundreds: ponderous 
dowagers and gouty Argentine aristocrats, pretty girls and gay young gallants, jolly 
boys and solemn duffers, manicurists and hairdressers off for a lark, courtesans tour- 
ing for pleasure and profit, and one elderly American scientist who looked with 
haughty contempt upon his shipmates. And certainly they were a silly lot, these 
white-gowned, dainty-slippered ladies and toy dandies now come to mince about 
that wilderness, and by the contrast of their alien grandeur turn its people’s wealth 
into poverty and their contentment into hankering. 

While Mrs. Neilsen and Mrs. Lundberg prepared the house for their reception I led 
the multitude up through the meadows to the hilltop, hoping that the quiet prospect 
there of rolling pasture land and sea would content them, yet always at a loss to 
think of any ‘‘wonders’’ to display to their impatient curiosity. 

“But where ate the Indians?’ some cried. ‘“Yes, show us the Indians!’’ echoed the 
crowd; and clamoring for Indians they thronged at my heels. 

I felt by now a showman’s responsibility and, as if I were somehow involved in a 
humbug, actually dreaded disillusioning my spectators. On one hope or another I led 
them on: the way grew thorny, fences obstructed it, too. Playfully screaming, titter- 
ing, protesting, they followed on a mile or two—and then my plan was formed. 
Eluding them I slipped through the underbrush and with all possible speed returned 
by a short cut to the house. There, near by, I found the mate in ardent conversation 
with a little blond lady. With the barest courtesy I drew him hastily away and into 
the house. 

In the smithy stood a barrel of long horsehair; my oil paints were at hand; there 
were cats’ skins in the storeroom and rags and ragged clothes; and above all artificial 
properties of savagery were the mate’s own ugly, scarred and almost toothless face 
and his terrific chest and arms. 

A quarter of an hour later a dreadful apparition crept out of the rear door of the 
house and walked across the adjacent pasture. At that moment the vanguard of the 
returning sightseers hove in view over the brow of the hill. Down they trooped,’ 


(150) 





VOYAGING 


~~ 








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FALLS NEAR HARBERTON 


gayly chattering and laughing—when suddenly one stopped and pointed. All eyes 
followed the direction of that hand, a commotion swept over the multitude. 

“Look! look!’ they cried to me who then approached. ‘‘An Indian!’ 

“You are in luck,’’ I said as I too discovered him, ‘‘for here, by the merest chance, 
you see the dreaded Yahgan Chief, Okokko, the most bloodthirsty of the race.”’ 

How I led the palpitating crowd nearer, nearer to that object of their curiosity and 
fear, how mothers called their daughters to beware, how gallant fellows quieted their 
trembling ladyloves, how at ten paces distant the boldest stopped while at their 
backs the others crowded close and formed a ring about the spectacle—all that is told. 
And there the savage sat, a fearsome object, naked to the waist but for the skins of 
wild animals that were rudely tied across his swarthy back and breast; while from 
the mass of coarse black hair that hung about his shoulders peered out a dusky face 
of such debased and sullen ferocity that nothing was left to be imagined of the aban- 
doned brutality of that savage nature. 

““A thoroughly bad character,’’ I was saying to the crowd. ‘‘He is known to have 
killed and devoured three white men and a woman.”’ 


(151) 


VOYAGING 


“But why are his arms tattooed?”’ asked an elderly woman who was regarding the 
beast through her lorgnette. 

“It was done by a renegade sailor,’’ I replied, my wits leaping into action, ‘‘who 
after throwing his lot in with these savages was at last treacherously murdered by 
them.’’ 

“Why he has blue eyes!’’ exclaimed a very pretty girl. 

‘‘Ah, there you have hit upon a very interesting story,’’ I answered, sparring for 
time; and I spun a tale of an escaped convict from Ushuaia who had mated with a 
Yahgan, and through his own savage talents had become the leader of a tribe and the 
founder of a lineage of chiefs. And, as the mate grew restless under the continued 
scrutiny I hastily passed around my cap for a collection of money and cigarettes, 
which having completed I told the crowd that the savage showed signs of approach- 
ing anger—and was promptly rid of them. 





‘Just like an American!’’ said the Argentines later, while laughing over the trick 
that had been played them; and in this may be read what the world thinks of us. 

But the joke was popular; and, binding my savage mate’s hands behind him with 
a stout rope, we carried him aboard the steamer to horrify and delight the remaining 
hundreds there. 

We have reached the eighth of January. While in almost hourly expectation of the 
steamer Ro Negro’s arrival word came of another postponement, but this time with 
the definite assurance that she would be at Harberton and ready to load on the 
sixteenth. To put off our trip to the Horn until after that date was made out of the 
question by the urgent necessity of my own return to Punta Arenas; to go before then 
Lundberg refused—and without an engineer we couldn’t run the boat. Suddenly it 
came to me, what I still believe to have been the truth, that Lundberg himself would 
never risk that trip. The situation was desperate. 


(152) 





VOYAGING 


Then a new plan occurred: to be carried to the nearest point of Navarin Island, to 
cross it on foot to Rio Douglas on the southwest shore, and there with an Indian and 
a canoe, as had been suggested by Mr. Feeque, make a dash for the Wollaston Islands. 
Lundberg readily consented to carry us across the channel, and the following day 
was set for the start. 

That day dawned, beautiful with blue and gold, and all was ready for our crazy 
scheme—when, riding down the trail toward the house, appeared a horseman. All 
knew him at a glance—CHRISTOPHERSON! 

In extenuation of the preceding omission from these pages of this great man’s name 
it must be said that, although in Ushuaia and constantly by Lundberg we had been 
told of Christopherson as a mighty seal and otter hunter, as a mariner familiar with 
every rock and little anchorage of those waters—even to the farthest Wollaston 
Islands, and of all men the best fitted to get us somehow to the Horn, he was at the 
same time known to be absent hunting seal on Staten Island a hundred miles to the 
eastward; he was therefore dismissed from our calculations. And lo! here, as an angel 
of providence, he was! 

Christopherson was a huge, calm man, a Swede. He spoke a broken English, softly, 
with a lazy drawl; he moved slowly, heavily; yet he was, somehow, the embodiment 
of latent energy and power. Moreover, he was familiar with Lundberg’s boat and the 
operation of the engine, and he enjoyed her owner’s unbounded confidence. To my 
proposition that he go with us 1n thar boat to the Horn both he and Lundberg con- 
sented at once, with the proviso from Lundberg that she be returned to him before 
the sixteenth, as it was essential to his work of transporting logs for loading on the 
Rio Negro. 

And so, with the morrow set for sailing, the days at Harberton had drawn to a 
close. Those many wecks of play and quiet occupation there in the comradeship of 
the two families had only deepened my sense that a great happiness was their lot as 
it had been mine while there among them. And my familiarity with the gentle land- 
scape and the untroubled waters of Harberton had but awakened me to an apprecia- 
tion of such quiet beauty as the true environment for contentment. I sat in the kitchen 
that last evening and told Mrs. Neilsen of what Harberton had meant to me, and that 
in the whole experience and travel of my life I had never known such happy lives as 
theirs nor lives whose happiness by the very conditions that bound them was so 
enduringly assured. 

She had been busied about her work, but for some moments had not moved. I 
became conscious of the silence and looked up. She was crying. 

“Oh, if you knew,”’ she sobbed, “‘if you only knew what you were saying! You 
have been here so long—and yet you understand so little.”’ 


(153) 





= he 
; Ae ee a 
: ZEAE BIRLA 


CHAPTER XXI 


ALL ABOARD 


UNDBERG’S boat was sloop-tigged; she was narrow and deep; she sailed 
abominably. An old 20-horse-power Daimler engine was her chief reliance. 
This engine had lain for years under water; it was rusted and cracked, it was 
bound together with wire and plugged with putty and soap. 

“The engine will never last to get there,’’ said Lundberg. He spoke with gloomy 
conviction. . 

We loaded the boat with some ballast, put a spare anchor and a strong new chain 
on board, and sailed. And the farewells that were said were as solemn as at a life- 
time’s parting. 

It was late at night and darkness came before we'd covered many miles. We anchored 
for two hours and sailed again at the break of dawn. 

It was profoundly calm, and with a favoring tide we made Ushuaia just as the 
town was waking. Hastily I went ashore to purchase provisions and to comply with 
the formalities of the port; we were impatient to get off. 

“Get six cases of gasoline and put them aboard,’’ had been my parting instruction 
to the mate. 

It did not occur to me that any misunderstanding could arise over so simple an 
order, and I put the matter comfortably out of my mind for the moment. 

Ushuaia is not a busy place; for lack of occupation people lie abed. So that, whereas 
by now the sun stood high, folks still were lingering over their morning coffee, and 
the stores were shut. 

It was almost two hours before I could procure my purchases, and get my dispatch 


(154) 





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VOYAGING 


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from the sub-prefect.* At the end of that time I hailed the mate to take me back aboard. 

“Oh,’’ says the mate as I step into the skiff, ‘‘about the gasoline: they could only 
let me have five cases.”’ 

Well) that s aboard, isn't it?’ 

“Why no; we thought we'd better wait to see you about it.”’ 

And there, by that stupidity that meant half an hour’s more delay, was sown the 
seed that bore its bitter fruit in the tragedy of disappointment that was to follow. 

It was still utterly calm when we weighed anchor, and calm as we passed into the 
bay. At the point of Ushuaia Peninsula a light breeze met us from the westward and 
broke the mirrored landscape of the channel. The wind increased. Half an hour from 


*ROL.—de la tripulacién de la lancha Nacional Ellen matricula 25309 y de 5/70 toneladas de registro, zarpa el lastre 
con destino a cabo de Hornos. 


NOUS 
DSLR oon 5 a Presto ChristophersOi.... g-chrecel ae iecee violas Sts iva ates bactn state e Sueco 
‘ic er | Sool 1 hae SIS ese ees ae CERES CE OGI Glo view ators oule.<'e elalnls Gincate ad paee bx Shed oe ¥gueh Norte Americano 
DAR CRCHEN shag au usc ge bla ies geen wns es Rockwell Kent oases cewaass se sees owe es tees & Yves - ne 


Ushuaia, Enero 11, 1923 


MOLINO, 
Ayudante. 


(157) 


VOYAGING 


sailing we were in mid-channel. It blew a gale and the seas broke over us; we made 
no headway. Coming about, we ran for the shelter of a group of islands off the penin- 
sula and anchored in their lee. 

The wind increased and raged all afternoon and evening. We were held all night at 
that anchorage, and the lost half hour became twelve. 

At two in the morning we awoke. It was cloudy and dark and calm. Not for an 
hour would the wretched engine start; then, in the grey dawn, we crossed the chan- 
nel to the lee of Navarin, skirted its shore among innumerable islands and, entering 
Murray Narrows, headed south. It began to rain. 

The passage between Navarin and Hoste Islands is in places very narrow; the shores 
are steep with many jutting headlands but not mountainous. They are clothed in 
forest. It was a gloomy wilderness and dark, that early morning in the rain, and the 
successive landmarks of missionary disaster were vested with a gloom fitting to the 
tragic spirit of their chronicles.* : 

Leaving the southeast point of Dumas Peninsula we entered upon the crossing of 
Ponsonby Sound. There was not a breath of wind and the snow-topped mountains of 
Hoste Island that stood as islands above the hanging banks of cloud were reflected in 
the grey mirror of the sea. In an hour we had crossed the sound and were entering on 
a long winding passage that transcepted the nose of Pasteur Peninsula. The shores 
were low and sparsely wooded with a ragged growth of dwarfed and tortured trees. 
In the tall grass of a little clearing stood a native settlement of three or four dilapi- 
dated shanties and two wigwams. No sign of life was there and we passed on. 

Presently we turned abruptly into a very narrow channel, an uncharted passage 
with which Christopherson was familiar, and after proceeding for some miles as if 
upon an inland river, emerged quite unexpectedly into Courselle Bay near the southern 
extremity of the peninsula. Here were cream-colored rock cliffs of an unusual forma- 
tion with tufts of brush-grass whiskering their faces. At their base were deep passages 
and caves, and these were alive with hair seal. 


*In 1851 England was horrified by the news from Tierra del 
Fuego of the death through starvation of Captain Allen Gar- 
diner and his little missionary band and crew. The record of 
their fears and sufferings remains in the astonishing diary of 
the captain that was found ‘‘miraculously”’ preserved beside 
his bones; and the reader of it is torn between admiration of a 
religious devotion far more wonderful than that of Job, and 
disgust at its driveling foolishness. However, to the martyr- 
dom of Captain Gardiner, “‘sailor and saint”’ as he is naively 
called in a memoir of his life, was reared a monument—the 
South American Mission; and in the extermination of the 
Yahgan race through the Mission's benevolence the death of 
the captain may be said to have been most completely avenged. 

Keppel Island, one of the west Falklands, was made the 
station from which, by means of a schooner—named Allen 
Gardiner, missionaries might communicate with Tierra del 


(158) 


Fuego, and to which natives might be brought for instruction. 
The first steps toward a rapprochement with the Indians were 
facilitated by the re-discovery of Jemmy Button, who, as 
readers of Darwin’s ‘Voyage of the Beagle”’ will recall, had 
been taken when achild to England, educated there, exhibited 
before the Queen, and then returned to his own people. Jemmy 
Button, now grown to middle age, still kept alive that spark 
of English speech which the divine breath of missionary zeal 
might fan into the flames of the redemption of his race. 

So it was brought to pass that Fuegian boys were taken 
back to Keppel; and if most of the children died during the 
years of their instruction, it was at least a solace that they 
died redeemed. Poor little Peter Duncan—once named Mult- 
gliunjer! He was only eleven when death carried him away. 
“I loved little Peter Duncan,’’ writes the missionary home, 
“‘he was obedient and kind. I shall sorely miss him; as I look 





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VOYAGING 





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ANCHORAGE OFF BAILEY ISLAND 


SST Lake ps we PATER Re TTT 


Experience had taught us to distrust fair weather; and, with hope so strongly set 
upon our destination, we never entered upon a passage of open water without anxiety 
lest a wind should rise and retard us or drive us back to shelter. But the day held 
always calm—the hushed unnatural and portentous calm of forces mustering for 
a storm. We crossed Tekenica Bay and passed between Packsaddle Island and the 
mainland of Hardy Peninsula; and then, with only rain clouds darkening and ob- 


around the school-room I shall not meet with his bright 
smile, nor remark the beauty of his eyes again. Poor little 
Peter! He was accustomed to say, ‘I want to be like Jesus!’ ”’ 

It happened that the Allen Gardiner was carrying back to 
their home on Navarin two little fellow Indians of Peter. 
Now it was not the tradition of those savage people to respect 
ptoperty—they merely loved it. The two lads saw aboard the 
cutter many little things they liked, and they had opportunity 
on the long voyage from the Falklands to attach a few of 
these. They did. The articles were missed, the boys were 
searched, the lost was found. The captain was a stern and 
upright man, and he reproved the boys accordingly and called 
them names, no doubt, that little Christians early learned the 
horrid and disgraceful import of. 

It was Sunday when the Allen Gardiner anchored at Woollya, 
and, while the boys—hotly resentful of the captain’s anger— 


(160) 


mingled with their relatives on shore, the captain, accom- 
panied by his entire crew—excepting the cook, who was in 
the galley busied with plum-duff—proceeded to one of the 
native wigwams, where he began the solemnization of divine 
service. 

The Yahgans were unusually interested this Sunday morn- 
ing; they gathered about the Christians in a great crowd. And 
when the benediction had been said they took up sticks and 
stones and killed the white men one and all. 

The cook, hearing the uproar and discovering its cause, 
jumped overboard and swam ashore. He fled into the forest 
and eventually, in miserable plight, reached the south coast of 
Navarin, where he fell in with another tribe of natives. These, 
there being nothing to be gained by killing him, treated him 
well; and after a lapse of time he was picked up by a ship and 
returned to his own land. 





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scuring the horizon, headed across Nassau Bay for the northern point of Grévy Islan 
The low nearer shores of the Wollaston group were visible, but only occasion 
cloud rifts faintly disclosed the mountain ranges of the farther island. And finall 
we neared the point of Grévy Island it rained, obscuring everything but the v 
shore we skirted. It was, therefore, not the anticipated wilderness of rocks and moun- 
tains that greeted us but islands mildly desolate in character with treeless plain: 
yellow grass fringed at the shore with grecn. However, as we penetrated Gret 
Bay, the mountains loomed out through their veils of cloud and showed the grandeur 


of the region we had entered. 





CHAPTER XXII 


AN ORGY AND A CHRISTENING 


HE Wollaston Islands are the last group of the archipelago of far south- 

western South America, the last peaks of the descending Cordillera to 

emerge above the sea. The western trade winds, checked and diverted by 

the mountain ranges to the north, sweep with accumulated violence around 
their southern end and make the Wollastons a region of prevailing storms. Their high 
peaks comb the clouds for those last miseries of hail and snow that heaven can inflict 
on desolation. No one inhabits them. 

We were therefore startled when, on entering Victoria Channel where we intended 
lying for the night, we saw smoke ascending from a supposedly untenanted camp on 
Bailey Island that in years past had been Christopherson’s. A long low shanty built 
of boards and tin stood on the shore with the luxuriant green bank of thicket at 
its back. A rod or two away, partly concealed in a grove of canelo trees, was a 
tent-shaped Indian wigwam. 

As we approached, a rude skiff manned by two men put out from the shore and 
- pulled to meet us. Pausing near us as we anchored, but keeping a few yards of water 
between the boats, they looked us over with obvious curiosity and distrust. What- 
ever might have been their fears of us, their own appearance was far from prepos- 
sessing. They were an unkempt, dirty-looking pair, a white man and an Indian. The 
white man was young and, in spite of a scraggly growth of silken whiskers, rakishly 
handsome, yet with the meanly pitiless eyes that are often the accompaniment of 
effeminate beauty. Bringing his scrutiny to some conclusion, he greeted us, invited us 
to come ashore, and then rowed back. 

Taking along two bottles of fiery cana and a quarter of mutton, we landed and 


(163 ) 














VOYAGING 


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Z — (it 
Ce Bee & i 
. gf a 
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SOUTHWESTWARD FROM THE SUMMIT OF BAILEY 


went up to the house. We entered a dark and filthy interior that revealed its furnish- 
ings only when our eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. The room was long 
and narrow; on a box opposite the door stood a small rusty cook stove; there was a 
stool and two or three kerosene tins to sit on—but no table; a chest, some bags of 
provisions, and, on the floor, two mattresses in opposite dark corners. From the 
rafters hung some half-devoured kelp-geese, dripping gore; a great pile of mussels and 
shells was heaped against the wall—and in the ooze from these a brood of goslings 
puddled. Here in this squalid filth lived two families; we were introduced: 

Vasquez—the man who had greeted us, a murderer—free after a term at Ushuaia. 

Genevieve—a pleasant, pretty, brown-skinned, dark-eyed, slatternly young Argen- 
tina fille de jote—his wife. 

Garcia—a male, aged fifty, a creature in no definite way deformed yet of as hid- 
eously forbidding an aspect as one might ever meet. He was short and pot-bellied; 
his huge-calved legs curved backwards as with out-turned toes he postured like an 
uncouth dancing master. His brow retreated; it was bald and lofty, and his hair 
waved from its apex like the plume of Hector’s helmet. His large grey eyes—blond 
eyes with yellow whites—were set in protruding heavy-lidded sockets; he rolled 


(164) 








WESTWARD FROM THE SUMMIT 


VOYAGING 


them about as though disdainful to disturb the ponderous repose of his huge head. 
The great moustache of a dragoon half hid a coarsely sensuous mouth and veiled in 
shadow the pitiful retreating chin. Barefooted in the muck of the floor this being 
stood, hands clasped Napoleon-wise behind, his chin pressed into the wrinkled hide 
of his neck, and, with the ferocious dignity of an imbecile, silently regarding noth- 
ing—Garcia, ex-inspector at the prison of Ushuaia. 

Margarita, his wife—a Yahgan of perhaps twenty, pathetically gentle, sweet and 
servile—and her child not more than three months old. 

And Berté, the Yahgan—he looked forty, said he was sixty, and proved it by 
accounting for twelve years at an English mission. The Yahgans are not beautiful. 
An accurate observer in the year 1884 describes them: faces “‘flat, wide, round, and 
full; cheek bones prominent, forehead low and wide on line with eyes; nose flat; eyes - 
very small and without lashes; lips swollen and hanging; strong jaws and good 
teeth. Very small hands and feet, thin arms and crooked legs.’’ Berté was of stocky 
build and seemed a powerful fellow. He lived alone in his wigwam, a very decent, 
tidy place. 

These people were subjects of Argentina, hunting otter on the soil of Chile; they 
were poachers living in fear of detection and the law. 

And now on one of the most remote and desolate spots upon the earth we stand in 
this dark and squalid den, confronted by as villainous a crew as ever fought for pirate 
treasure. We are unarmed. Night is descending. 

The murderer is pouring out cana; he advances toward me bearing two cups, and 
hands me one. . 

“Sefior,’’ he says, ‘‘they tell me that you are an artist. I consider artists, writers 
and musicians to be the greatest people in the world. I drink to your prosperity: 
salud!’’ And, with the most candid, charming smile, he touches my cup with his, and 
we drink. 

“Victor Hugo and Tolstoi!’’ he continues, ‘‘they are my favorite authors. What 
greatness! what grandeur of conception!”’ 

And, as we proceed to discuss the extensive literature of Europe with which he is 
familiar, Genevieve, our graceful hostess, pours out more cana. ‘‘Salud! Salud!’ The 
den’s a festive hall this night by candlelight, a friendly, riotously jolly place. ““O 
Genevieve, sweet Genevieve,’’ Ising, entrancing her. Vasquez is charmed, Margarita 
smiles as she suckles her babe, the inspector rolls his eyes at me and sternly nods. 

Vasquez throws off his coat and dances—wild, disgusting, beautiful by the sinuous 
grace of his lithe body. Margarita laughs and Genevieve scteams with enraptured 
merriment. And they shudder playfully when Vasquez, with the long, keen bread- 
knife in his hand, enacts for us the drama of his murder. 

And Berté dances, sodden with drink, some still-remembered war dance of his race; 
and then relapses into the sullen lethargy that we had roused him from. The drunken 


(166) 


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primitive! He sits there with his head dropped on his breast, a long time, silent; then 
suddenly he raises it and bawls out one shuddering obscenity—at which the women 
turn away and hold their ears; and their eyes laugh. 

Margarita sits there silently, her maternity in affecting contrast to the drunken 
uproar. “Are you happy here?”’ I ask her, seating myself at her side. She speaks a 
little English, murmuringly, in a low sweet voice. 

““No—not happy, ’’ she replies, modestly concealing the breast which her child suckles. 

“Do you like it in Ushuaia?”’ 

me CS 

I look from her drooping moon-round face, as calm as Buddha’s, from her sad and 
gentle face, to that sullen brute, her mate. She is watching me. 

“Do you love him?”’ Task. 

Her face is hidden from me when at last she answers very quietly, ‘“Yes—I love him.”’ 

On being asked the name of her child, Margarita told me with distress that it had 
not been baptized and that it bore no name. It was a girl. I don’t know what pos- 
sessed me then—but in a spirit far removed from levity, although I have no faith, 
I told the mother that I would perform the baptism and give the child the name of 
my wife. The father was brought into consultation, and, on being assured that I was 
qualified to carry out the ceremony, entered into the plan with serious interest. My 
mate did his part with unexpected dignity, explaining in Spanish to those present 
the nature of the ceremony and directing the conversion of the den into a chapel. The 
floor was somewhat cleared of its litter and in the center was placed a kerosene tin as 
a support to the font. Genevieve scoured out their only basin, a great thing of pink 
enamel, and, filling it with rain water, placed it on the tin. Behind the fontI took my 
station with the babe in my arms and its parents on either side; the others stood ina 
group facing usa little way removed. Ata sign of my hand all became reverently silent. 

“Dear God:’’ I prayed, *‘may this little child thrive in health and beauty and some- 
how out of the misery of its birth emerge into happiness; and in token of this prayer 
I baptize and christen her in the name of God, Kathleen Kent Garcia.’’ And I touched 
her brow with water and kissed her. 

“In what church?’’ asked Garcia when I had finished. 

‘“There is but one God,’’ I answered. 

“El mismo Dios!’’ they repeated, in moved tones. 

Being asked for a certificate of baptism I composed one and gave it to Garcia, with 
a letter to old Mr. Lawrence begging him not to repudiate my act. 

How we got aboard that night no one could recall. We awoke in bright daylight. 
The wind was blowing with the velocity of a gale, making it difficult even in our 
comparatively sheltered anchorage to row to land. Wind-bound, we spent the day 
ashore and, to accommodate Christopherson, took the entertaining Vasquez for a 
walk. He was in high spirits and vauntingly told me that the ceremony of the pre- 


( 169 ) 


VOYAGING 


HORN ISLAND 





ceding night had pleased him particularly as it was in truth the baptism of his child. 
So much the better for little Kathleen, I thought. 

On this day the dreary bog lands of Bailey Island lay golden in the sunlight, while 
the many ponds that were dispersed about the plain mirrored the deep blue of the 
zenith.* The stunted trees confined to the depressions of the land were evidence of the 


prevailing force of the wind. 


*A mission was established on Bailey Island in 1877 with a 
Mr. B— in charge. A few years later it was moved to Teke- 
nika. B—’s reports are amusingly free-and-easy documents 
that stridently bemoan the looseness of the native morals 
which permitted little girls of eight to marry married men. 
“I shall make them lead better lives,’’ he said. So he put the 
girls into an Orphan Home and undertook their instruction 
with such ardour.that it became the scandal of Fuegia. B—'s 
carryings-on came to the knowledge of Mrs. B—, and upset 
her terribly; it reached the ears of the bishop clear over in the 
Falkland Islands. It was too much. Official action was re- 
solved upon—when suddenly, in the very nick of time, Mr. 
B— fell overboard and was drowned. It was beautifully re- 
ported in the missionary magazine at home: ‘One day, from 
causes which have not been ascertained, Mr. B— was drowned 
by the upsetting of his boat in the bay, to the inexpressible 


(170) 


sorrow of his wife and children. Too late the sad event was 
noticed on the shore; but it shows the devotion and courage 
of the native women, who were first apprised of the occur- 
rence, that they plunged into the surf and swam toward the 
spot, in the hope of saving their friend, although the tide was 
high and again and again they were thrown back by the 
waves. But although Mr. B— passed from the scene of his 
self-sacrificing labours, the effect of his teaching remained, 
and bore fruit among the natives.’’ There is an epilogue: some 
time later a skull was picked up on the beach and acclaimed 
as Mr. B—’s. It was carefully placed in a box and put in the 
chapel, pending shipment to the Falklands. An Indian boy, 
one Cyril Mateen, was among those sent to fetch it. He took 
Mr. B—’s head out of the box, held it up before him, and 
with a broad grin apostrophised it thus: ‘‘O you white man! 
you like love my countrywoman."’ 


VWeOny AGING 


The following day still holding us wind-bound, I set out with the mate for the sum- 
mit of the island, a mountain eleven hundred feet in altitude. The way lay over inland 
flats of bog and marsh, and stony hillsides, and through thickets of matted brush and 
wind-dwarfed trees. The day was one of alternating sun and rain. After our first cold 
drenching we learned to watch the squalls approach and seek in time the shelter of 
a rock, or make a refuge of boughs piled on the top of a low-branching tree. Under 
such shelters we would huddle, shivering with cold, and let the rain drive past us 
on the gale. 

After a last steep ascent of several hundred feet we reached the mountain top, and, 
clinging there against the storm, beheld the vast and fearful wonder of the region of 
Cape Horn. Through the drifting murk of the clouds appeared a wilderness of moun- 
tain peaks with the torn sea gleaming at their base, stark islands with the storm’s 
night over them or glistening with a sunshaft on their streaming sides, or veiled 
illusively in falling rain. And, as we looked, suddenly the darkness of a midnight 
closed around us, obliterating everything but the pinnacle of rock on which we 
crouched for shelter. 

Then the squall struck—and the screaming fury of it shook our faith in the stability 
of granite mountain peaks. White lines of hail streaked past, hiding the universe in 
their perpetual stream. The world became to us that bit of rock we clung to, a cast-off 
meteor fragment hurled through space. 

And then, as suddenly as it had come, the squall had passed; and we were back 
again upon a mountain peak. But it was winter now, and the sun shone on slopes 
white with new-fallen snow. 

Our eyes turned southward. The jagged range of Hermit Island was shrouded in a 
passing storm. Hall Island off its eastern end was almost lost in the obscurity of 
vapors that engulfed the south. 

““Look!”’ we cried. 

The vapors parted: past the hard, dark edge of Wollaston appeared a cloven point 
of rock, faint and far off, with white surf gleaming at its foot; Horn Island! 

We have seen it! And the vapors close. 


(171) 





CHAPTER XXII) 


THE RAINBOW'’S END 


ERTE, sick from the debauch, lay in his wigwam. When we had called on 
him and asked his prophecy of coming weather the oracle had replied un- 
failingly, ‘‘Very bad.’’ And so it proved. It was the fourteenth of January, 
the eve of the last day that we might keep the boat. The wind raged un- 

abated, and it rained. It was unutterably dismal in that place. On board the boat the 
rain leaked through the hatch coverings and dripped on everything; and yet in seek- 
ing refuge on shore we were thrown in with the sickening debauchery and intrigue of 
that household. It was in truth the last place. And if in the world that we have 
travelled the possession of some property in luxuries and comforts had but bred in 
men a restlessness for more, here where there were none even the putrefaction stank 
with the ferment of discontent. : 

I stood looking out of the shanty and saw a change come over out of doors. The 
rain had almost ceased. I went out and walked to the water’s edge. It was near sun- 
down and the clouds had made it almost dark. But now a golden light transfused the 
atmosphere; and presently as I stood looking northeasterly across the water there 
appeared a rainbow faintly glowing there. Its omen of the pot of gold came to my 
mind and I remembered the gleaming arch that had spanned our southward way four 
months ago and that again had seemed to lead us through the mountains: and now, 
ever eluding an attainment, it beckoned northward! There is no rainbow’s end, I 
thought. Yet even as I watched it now it grew more bright and more defined; a full 
arch blazed across the north, and its ends, passing the horizon, came nearer, approach- 
ing each other in the lower hemicycle. Now they were upon the very waters of the — 
harbor and moved still calmly downward through the wind-blown spray like destiny 


(172) 


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approaching consummation. The flaming circle closed: . . . . God! where the two 
ends meet was I! 


Berté, as I approached his wigwam, came staggering out. At my anxious question 
about the morrow’s weather—on which hung our last hope of attaining the Horn— 
he enjoyed a more than customary nonchalance in answering; he wasn't thinking 
about it, he didn’t have to think; he knew. 

‘“Tomorrow,’’ he said at last, ‘“‘not so bad.’’ 

We sailed at the first sign of dawn. Berté and the intrepid Vasquez unexpectedly 
appeared alongside in their skiff and asked to be carried through Washington Chan- 
nel. We took them on board and the skiff in tow. In that dark canal between the 
mountains of Wollaston and Bailey Islands it was hushed and calm, so that our pas- 
sage desecrated the silence, and the echo of the noisy motor flaunted, too soon, its 
puny arrogance at the slumbering Titans. Near the channel’s southern end we met 
the ground swell’s warning of the seas awaiting us outside, and from the mountain 
faces the awaking wind beat down in angry flaws. Then, entering Franklin Sound, 
we lost the last shelter of the land and were exposed to the unbroken force of the 
sea and wind. 


(174) 


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Close to the shore, in the lee of a small peninsula of Wollaston Island, we stopped 
to disembark our passengers. It was safe enough: they had the wind and the sea 
astern to make the bay. But their courage failed them and they fairly cringed with 
lack of resolution. 

“Come on!’ we cried impatiently, ‘“‘get out!’ 

Somehow they clambered into the skiff. They had brought two guns on board: 
someone held the gun out to Vasquez, who seemed to grasp it in his trembling hands. 

“Have you got it?”’ was asked. ‘‘Good!”’ 

And the gun, released, slipped through his fingers and sank to the bottom of the 
sea. We tossed the rifle into the skiff, ordered them to let go—and bore away, leaving 
them frantically pulling for the shore. And now the Horn! 

It was still the twilight of early morning—a gloomy twilight, for not a streak of 
crimson had broken the dark pall of the clouds. The crested sea was mountain high 
and tragically black, a restless tossing sea, not wind-blown but more terrible in that 

it seemed to lift and fall by some energy within itself. Our boat was slow in answet- 
ing the helm; she was sluggish and dispirited and had no buoyancy to ride the crests 
but, like an over-laden tired thing, let them break over her and pour the length of her 
and weigh her down. It was raining, and we were drenched. 


(175) 


% 


ViOWEACGsIINAS, 


The companionway was a cramped shelter for three men. I went below and crawled 
on all fours through the dripping, smoke-filled, suffocating darkness of the hold to 
reach the forward hatch. If it happened to be fastened, it occurred to me, I’d never 
live to reach the air again. It wasn’t. I propped it open—only an inch or two for 
breath; but a moment later a sea boarded us and poured a deluge through. 

We had almost reached the middle of Franklin Sound. A strong wind had increased 


the sea’s violence; we were being roughly handled and were making very little prog- 


ress. The mate, holding the tiller, watched the seas with concentration so intense 
that his face had an expression of agony. Christopherson was as impassive as ever but 
not smiling. If my own countenance showed anything but painfully affected non- 
chalance it must have been faith—not faith in God but in Christopherson and Ole 
Ytterock, the mate. For a long time in the wild uproar of the engine and the sea and 
wind no one had spoken. Then Christopherson spoke in Swedish to the mate, and the 
mate answered—without taking his eyes from the water. Christopherson turned 
to me. 

“T tank,”’ he says quietly, ‘“‘we must turn back.”’ 

“Can't we make it?”’ Task. 

“T tank not.’’ And the mate looked at me and shook his head. 


(176) 


ee en ee 





Cc 


HAPTER XXIV 


VIVE VALEQUE 


ATER and now in looking back upon that moment in Franklin Sound when 
we attained our “‘farthest South’’ I am inclined to forget how cold and 
miserable we were, and how hopelessly our little craft struggled to advance 
through those dark, huge seas; I belittle the terrors of the moment and re- 

proach myself with having abandoned too easily, on the counsel of others, that last 
attempt to achieve what I had come so far to do. And yet fate timed with dramatic 
precision one incident that should make me calmly certain that our continuance 
against Christopherson’s judgment would have brought failure and possibly dis- 
aster upon us. We had scarcely regained the shelter of Washington Channel when our 
motor failed; not for five hours would it run again.* 


Besides the immediate necessity of returning the boat to Lundberg was that of my 
own return to Punta Arenas. The Steamship Tolwma in which my passage home had 
been booked was due there, with some uncertainty, on the last of January, and, with 
much to attend to before leaving, it was important that I reach Punta Arenas as much 
in advance of that date as possible. My return journey bore the complexion of a race 
with time. 

After repairing the motor we ran for Harberton—not by the sheltered route that 
we had come, but straight for the passage between Navarin and Lenox Islands. Very 
soon after leaving the Wollastons we ran into fair weather; and all day as we sped 
along with favoring wind under a sunny sky those forlorn islands appeared unchang- 
ingly shrouded in storm clouds. 


*A recent communication informs me that two days after the motor brought us safely back to Harberton it breathed its very last. 


(177) 


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VOYAGING 


We reached Harberton that evening: and it was a palliation for our abandonment 
of the Horn that the Rio Negro arrived promptly on the following morning: our sac- 
rifice had not been unnecessary. 

We had not, as it may appear, entirely forgotten that we owned a five-ton sloop, 
the Kathleen, of New York, still anchored in the remote waters of Admiralty Sound. 
On my description of her she was purchased, f.o.b. Punta Arenas, by Mr. Neilsen, 
and the mate was dispatched to rejoin her. Since I was not to see him again until six 
months later in Vermont I shall bring his story to a hasty conclusion. Proceeding on 
horseback as far as the cabin of Francisco in the valley of Lapataia—a journey of four 
days—he recrossed to Bahia Blanca, making the return journey through the valley, 
lightly burdened, in two days. There he found the scene of the mill changed by dis- 
aster. A hurricane from the southeast had completely demolished the main building 
of themill. It had at the same time driven all the little craft at that anchorage ashore. 
The Kathleen fortunately was undamaged. 

While waiting to be towed to Punta Arenas, as was to be arranged by me, the 
mate reconditioned her; so that on her arrival two weeks later at Punta Arenas she 
appeared as bright and new as on the fateful day that we had left. 

-Here the mate abandoned the agreement that he had made to return to Harberton 
to go into the service of Lundberg. Needing money, he accepted, with characteristic 
recklessness, the published challenge to all comers of the local pugilistic celebrity; 
and, after careful training and grooming as the white hope of the foreigners of Punta 
Arenas, submitted gloriously to an inglorious beating and a knockout in three 
rounds. Thus ended his immediate South American adventures. 

And here we dismiss him. That in his life he will continue to ‘‘carry on’’ there is 
no doubt; but if he carries through, fortune must favor him beyond the merits of his 
purblind rashness. 

From the affection with which I have written of Harberton must be judged my 
sorrow at what was to be perhaps a lifetime’s parting from those friends. As if to 
makemy memory of that happiness imperishable, it was a fair, sweet sunlit morning 
when I rode away; and my last far-backward view along the trail was of the gleam 
of waving handkerchiefs. Farewell, dear Harberton. 

My route lay across the mountains to the head of Lago Fognano; from thence to 
the eastern coast to the estancia of Via Monte at Rio Fuego, northward as far as San 
Sebastiene and westward to Useless Bay. I had planned to continue to Porvenir and 
from there cross the Strait of Magellan to Punta Arenas by the boat that was in regu- 
lar communication between those ports; but fortune, as will be told, shortened my 
land journey. 

One of the Harberton men had been detailed to accompany me to the lake, and for 
my second day’s long ride to Rio Fuego we led a spare horse. The trail was difficult, 
traversing miles of forest and broad stretches of bog where the dilapidated corduroy 


(179) 


V-OF AGUNG 



























































































































































Saga 
= a ox 


SR ee SP eel? 


ON THE INLAND TRACK FROM HARBERTON 


was of questionable value under foot. It crossed the mountains at a high altitude, 
somewhat above the timber line and then plunged precipitately toward the inland 
plain of the lake. The trail on the northern side was particularly hazardous by reason 
of the sodden bog; and, then, as a warning of what might happen to the reckless 
horseman, we passed a horse with the brand of the Argentine constabulary mired and 
dead at the side of the trail. | 

Rain came with the twilight and we were yet miles from the Ona Indian encamp- 
ment on the lake where we intended to stay the night. At last, tired and wet, we 
reached it, a scattered settlement of cabins and wigwams standing in a Clearing some- 
what elevated above the lake. We were hospitably received by the most prosperous 
resident of the place and invited into his cabin. There, seated on the floor beside the 
stove, were two women, one his wife—a woman of middle age—and the other pos- 
sibly his daughter. And in that company I passed as foolishly embarrassed a first half 
hour as any in my life. While they stared at me with persistent amused curiosity at 
every word I uttered in an attempt at conversation they went into convulsions of 
laughter. I relieved the situation by producing the flute, and by its means transformed 
their ridicule into wonder. 


The Onas as I saw them appeared a superb race. What dignity they must have pos- 
(180) 








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—_— 
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PASTURES OF VIA MONTE 


sessed in their savage state can only be guessed; yet even the disfigurement of civilized 
rags detracted little from the entire tall, lithe, free-limbed, straight-featured beauty 
of the young woman. 

It happened on the following day that an Indian, one Nana, was going to Rio 
Fuego and I attached myself to him for guidance. The distance was upwards of sixty 
miles and an early start would have been desirable. Nana, however, delayed until 
almost noon, and then abruptly mounted and rode off without regard to me. How- 
ever, I was soon upon his heels, although my horse, being heavy-burdened and 
somewhat tired from the journey of the day before, kept up with difficulty. For 
two hours Nana rode madly on, vouchsafing not a word to me nor even turning 
in his saddle to see how I contrived to follow. But finally he thawed, accepting 
cigarettes and food. 

All day and into the darkness we rode across those rolling sheep lands. It was at 
last near midnight; for an hour a strange, far distant roar had reached my ears. A 
dense mist had settled over the land so that I lost all sense of where we were. We 
began the ascent of a hill. Suddenly, as I reached the top, the sound swelled to the 
cumulative magnitude of prolonged and never ending thunder, while below us, 
gleaming in the night, appeared the long white line of breakers on the ocean shore. 


(181) 











LAGO FOGNANO 





Ne Oeren Gil N.G 


An hour later we reached the estancia of Via Monte, where, leaving my luggage with 
the Indian, I went to bed. 

‘Tell me something desperate about the Indian, Nana,’’ I said next day to some- 
one on the farm. “‘I need some book material.”’ 

“No need of inventing anything about that fellow,’’ was the answer. ‘‘He’s the 
strongest and most desperate of the lot—but they can’t get the goods on him. He’s 
known to bea horse thief, but they can’t catch him at it. Last year he was married to 
a woman and her daughter and the daughter disappeared. They’re sure he killed her 
—but can’t prove it.”’ 

Here, though with the bravest will to shoulder my pack and tramp on through the 
wilderness to Porvenir, I found myself, at Via Monte, suddenly upon the very thresh- 
old of cultivation where, thanks to the friendliness of the British ranchers all along 
the way, to good roads and to Henry Ford, I found myself at the end of my pedestrian 
wanderings, and in six days, by the grace of encountering a steamer at Useless Bay, 
on time in Punta Arenas. 


And now, having brought my Voyaging to a conclusion, I may, as at the church’s 
benediction, turn with my little congregation toward that rainbow land of the far 
south and repeat my homage to its hospitality. 


The Magellan Times 
January 21, 1923. 


Since the very day of my coming, I have found in Punta Arenas, in Tierra del Fuego, and wherever 
I have met mankind, such friendliness that Iam moved to tender publicly my profound thanks for the 
generous hospitality of the land. 

Tierra del Fuego! You tear yourself from the despairing embrace of weeping wife and children at 
home and come here over seven thousand miles of sea to show the world by combat with the ele- 
ments, with cold and ice and with murderous savages, the magnificent valor of your manhood. What 
wild extravagance of fancy! Instead of bravery you are challenged in this wilderness to display the 
utmost of what decency and manners you possess that you may meet with due courtesy the kindness 
of even such blood-curdling, otter-poaching desperados as were our hosts in the Wollaston Islands. 

We have had varied experience in our travels. We have seen the wilderness at its worst, and have 
travelled for days over country that no white man had ever crossed; and we have found that the 
worst is not too bad to be a pleasure ground for anyone who loves the wilderness enough to strap 
a pack upon his back and enter it. 

And even the disaster that threatened us almost within the first hour we sailed seemed blessedly 
contrived that we might experience the hospitality of Dawson Island, of Marcou and of the Morrisons. 

And we have seen the best. We’ve been at Lago Fognano with Robert Mulach, at Bahia Blanca 
with Don Antonio and Curly, at Ushuaia and Remilino with the Lawrences; and we have lived for 
weeks in that paradise which is called Harberton, where roses grow as big as sunflowers and where 
sheep don’t get the scab. And if I live to be one hundred and fifty (as Ino doubt shall) my memory of 
Christmas there with that dozen of happy children of the Neilsens’ and the Lundbergs’ will never fade. 

I have crossed the mountains from Harberton to Lago Fognano, and seen there Ona maidens so 
ravishingly beautiful that one must marvel how I ever parted from them. I have ridden all day and 


(183 ) 


VOYAGING 


far into the night over the green meadowlands of the Kingdom of Via Monte and still not reached 
their end. I’ve started afoot with a heavy pack upon my shoulders from Rio Fuego to Useless Bay, 
and what with the Goodalls, and Jacksons, and Munros and Ross’s, and Donaldsons, and Thompsons, 
been so helped along and housed and fed and put to bed in princely bedchambers that I may boast of 
having walked across the Island without ever touching foot to ground. 

The pampas are profoundly impressive in their monotonous immensity, the mountains are at once 
a glory and a horror, an inert embodiment of overwhelming force. The forests are luxuriantly green, 
with stately trees, and violets starring their dark floors; and in them live the gentlest of wild crea- 
tures. It is a peaceful and friendly wilderness, neither intemperately hot nor cold. And everywhere 
among the settlers poor or rich the traveller meets a warmer hospitality, more trust, more generosity 
than he'd find elsewhere in a lifetime. 





The 
END 


(184) 

























ere rhe fabltat of 
‘ha Alacaloof Jnc'’s. 





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Southernmose 
Port of the contrnené 
of South Amerie 


Cape Froward 





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WARNING TO NAVIGATORS 


Do not attempt to navigate by LAs Chart. 
firm land of rock formotion will be found €o ec- 
Cupy Space that the trred cartographer fas shown 
as water. /n fact theres nothing accurate about the 
map. Tf es merely better than that other chart here- 
with published over the advertisement “e xactrssema 
delitneatio" 














= : : J < 


: EifenSedastian Say 


TIERRA DEL FUEGO 


s 
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. 
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Cape Penas 







Ona Indian 
\Sertlemenr — 
5 










The boundery of Chile ond Argentine 
a follows Beagle Channet Eastward. 


OT A AE SD Md 














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abetat of the Yas SSE 
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— 


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= 


SS ——— 
False Cape fflorn g 


——=— ¢ 
SSS. 











Wallaston Islands 











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